Sound files

Is there anyway to compress a long (about 2 mins for background music) sound file or do something to it so that the flash movie doesn’t take forever to download. I am using MP3 compression but it’s adding a large overhead to my swf.
I am trying to get away from using short sound loops as they tend to sound tacky and can be monotonous.

Also, due to the large sound file (which by the way I am NOT exporting in the first frame), the preloader for the movie doesn’t even show.
I’ve changed my linkage properties for all “Export for Actionscript” objects to NOT export in the first frame.

What am I doing wrong?