Unique user counting in the Soundslice embed

In our Licensing plan, we charge based on usage. You pay based on the number of unique users per month who use the Soundslice player on your site.

How do we count unique users? We have two methods, and you can choose which you prefer.

Method 1: Explicitly reported user IDs

https://www.soundslice.com/slices/.../embed/?u=USER_ID_IN_YOUR_SYSTEM

This is our recommended method, because it’s as accurate as possible.

With this method, you dynamically include your users’ user IDs in the Soundslice embed code. You essentially say “User ID XXX in my system is now using the Soundslice player.”

This is done with the "u" embed URL parameter. Set this URL parameter to whatever your user’s unique ID is. We ask that it not include any personally identifiable information (no email addresses). It can be a string or number, and the maximum length is 100 characters.

For example, if Mary is one of your website’s customers and is user ID 123 in your system, you’d use a Soundslice embed URL like this:

https://www.soundslice.com/slices/.../embed/?u=123

Each time Mary views a Soundslice embed on your site, pass ?u=123 in the embed code.

You can of course use other URL parameters as well, to customize the player’s behavior. Just make sure to separate the URL parameters with the ampersand character, as explained in this help page.

Each month, we at Soundslice will simply tally the number of unique user IDs you sent us.

In order to do this dynamically, your website will need to be using some sort of template system and content management system. Please feel free to contact us if you have any technical questions — we can’t necessarily promise we’ll be able to help with your specific setup, but we can at least give developers some guidance.

Method 2: IP address

This is our default method for people who don’t explicitly report user IDs via method 1.

With this method, we simply tally the number of unique IP addresses who use your embeds in a given month. You don’t need to change your embed codes in any way.

Which method will Soundslice use for my account?

By default, we’ll use method 2 (IP addresses). To switch to method 1, make sure you’ve added the u= parameter to your embed codes (as explained above) and contact us to let you know you’ve done so.

Pros and cons of the two methods

Method 1 is much more reliable. You have a 100% guarantee that you’re only being charged for the users who use Soundslice — regardless of how many different devices they’re using, how many IP address they’re using and how many pages they access on your site.

The downside of method 1 is that it requires some technical setup on your end. It’s easy, and it’s a “set it and forget it” kind of thing, but it’s still something you need to set up.

Method 2 has a risk of overcounting people who use multiple IP addresses. At the same time, it also undercounts people who use the same IP address — for example, if many separate students are all accessing your service from a single school’s internet connection.

Why doesn’t Soundslice just set a cookie?

A few reasons:

• This would overcount people using multiple devices.
• Many web browsers block third-party cookies these days. For these browsers, effectively they’d be counted as a fresh new user each time they loaded Soundslice.

What precisely does a user need to do in order for him/her to be counted?

We count a user as soon as our player is loaded. It doesn’t matter whether the user presses Play or not (there’s value in simply seeing notation without playing).

What about the miniplayer embed?

The miniplayer embed also supports both methods.

With Method 1, what should I do for free users who don’t have user accounts on my site? What is their user ID?

We recommend creating an “ad hoc” user ID in your system the first time you see the user, saving that ID in a cookie. Then pass that to us with the embed requests.

Can I see my unique user total so far this month?

Yes! See your embed stats.

Is there a way to test that my user ID integration is working correctly?

Yes! Visit your “Last 50 embed views” page (direct link here). This is updated every few seconds and lists the last 50 views to your Soundslice embeds, with the user ID for each one.