On my web site I have a link to an audio file. My firewall prevents it from playing in Windows Media Player. This seems to be a problem with other computers than mine. Remove the firewall and it plays. I know I can configure my firewall to overcome this but that does not really solve the problem other visitors. Other sites have demo music which plays without problems. /any idea on how to solve this?

What format does your audio file use?

answer .wma

It gets the firewall involved because Windows Media Player, by default, checks to see if it's the latest version, or if there are any updated codecs, or the validity of any music licenses, etc. Firewalls may deem this checking as a malicious outbound connection.

Winamp does this too, but not as badly.

These are client-side settings that you have no control over, obviously.

Re-coding it in a non-Windows specific format like .ogg or .flac may help or you could embed the sound in Flash which is what some people do.