Embedding Audio on Website/Functionality Rant

I am not a web designer. Nor am I a web developer. However, what I am is ambitious and project focussed*.

I created (with a little help) my own website to highlight my skills. Granted, it is a little restaurant menu in style. Incidentally, if you *run* a restaurant and would like help designing your site/menu, get in touch!

When my brother approached me with a request to build him a website I was filled with fear. He knew the score, no blagging on my part, and he just needed an online business card to highlight his wares. His "wares" (ware? wares? I have no idea of the correct syntax) happen to be creative in tone and would need audio. Would that be hard? NO, of course not. To embed video you use youtube/vimeo and you get the code snippet and link to the file. Easy. Audio will be fine.

Yeah...No. It won't. I found, after having a little google, the Google Reader Audio Player. Simple, you copy and paste the code and amend the URL to reflect your file. It works!

Google Reader Audio Player

Well, it *did*. Then, around the 7th June it just stopped. Nothing. After more googling I realised that google changed the URL and corresponding code. Not only could I not find the new code but did I really want to use a player that would be likely to change without so much as a by your leave?

No. Sorry, Google.

Apparently there isn't an audio player that you can embed that offers a simple, clean layout and that will work (without odd plugins needed) across platforms and browsers.
It is no longer acceptable to ignore functionality.

Audio files need to work on Grannie's PC in IE6 as they do on Nephew's tablet in Chrome, stranger's iphone in Safari and my own humble HTC. You would no longer accept a site where the content text wouldn't render in anything other than FF on a Mac? Why should audio be different.

Functionality matters, more than ever in a time when you just don't know what platform is going to be circulating the masses in the next couple of months.

A site needs to be functional and - again, forgive the cliche - organic.

I know all this but don't necessarily have the requisite code experience to be able to solve the issue. However, if someone out there could provide a solution that would be great!

There must be something somewhere that I am missing - meanwhile I am using the working (though not aesthetic) yahoo player. It is doing the trick for now but I think I need to get back to searching for something that ticks all the boxes.

Yahoo Player - Slide Out MP3 Player

*And, contrary to the evidence, against wanky corporate "buzz" words.