I get asked this question a lot, and the answer is NO, for the majority of people. Of course, if you write music, have a flash video, etc, it’s o.k., as long as the viewer can 1. Turn it off or skip it, and 2. It doesn’t play that long. Unless you are going to put your whole album in a loop and give people pause, fast forward, and rewind capabilities, I say, leave it off.

Here are a few reasons why.

1. Your audience might be listening to music already
2. It doesn’t really add much to the experience. Do you feel like your missing out on something at ebay because they don’t have music playing?
3. A lot of people could be at work, and a shot of AC/DC could get them in trouble, discouraging them from visiting your site again
4. It’s a little cheesy.

It’s kind of like hold music when you call an automated phone system; it just isn’t great. Take a look at any of the top 100 websites, do they have music playing on their homepage? Most don’t, if any actually do. It’s not a best practice of top websites, and even though it works for Myspace pages, it doesn’t work for most professional business websites.