can't play amazon music

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pegi
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can't play amazon music

Post by pegi »

does anyone know why I can't play the music that is advertise on Amazon . If I want to listen to a bit of a record, it won't play at all. Any idea?
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Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

Do any of the following sample clips from the amazon.co.uk site work for you in RealPlayer or WMP:

http://tinyurl.com/bq3yl ? (I had no problem with any of them in either player).
old FatJohn
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Post by old FatJohn »

Both formats work for me too...
Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

Unfortunately, when one goes to the U.S. site ( www.amazon.com ), WMP doesn't work at all (new tab with player opens but does nothing), while the Real Player option to play an audio sample required me to download the RealAudio 3.0 codec, after which the Real Player samples worked well.

When one opens amazon.com in IE, however, not only does WMP work in playing clips, but there's also a "Music Sampler" which plays ALL samples of a CD one after the other with no further user involvement. This option doesn't even appear in Firefox, thanks to Amazon.com's wonderful, Microsoft-oriented coding.

Also interesting is the fact that links to the WMP audio clips, when right-clicked while in Firefox, and using the IE View extension ("open target link in IE"), don't work in IE. Open amazon.com with IE, and the WMP clips work. Go figure!

There's clearly obstacles to Firefox in Amazon.com's audio samples. Using Real Player to listen to clips is your only choice. A better way is to go to www.amazon.co.uk and listen to their samples in either WMP or Real Player, and in addition they give you the choice of broadband or dial-up, which leads to better sound quality for people with broadband (as opposed to only 16kbps at the U.S. site).
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

bushvenom wrote:Unfortunately, when one goes to the U.S. site ( www.amazon.com ), WMP doesn't work at all (new tab with player opens but does nothing)
Same for me using Firefox 1.0.7 but I also have the latest Firefox beta2 nightly (build rv:1.8b5 20051012 Firefox/1.4.1) on my WinXP system (WMP10) and the amazon.com music clips DO play in the embedded WMP when I try them in Firefox 1.4.1.
Alice Wyman
Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

Alice wrote:
bushvenom wrote:Unfortunately, when one goes to the U.S. site ( www.amazon.com ), WMP doesn't work at all (new tab with player opens but does nothing)
Same for me using Firefox 1.0.7 but I also have the latest Firefox beta2 nightly (build rv:1.8b5 20051012 Firefox/1.4.1) on my WinXP system and the amazon.com music clips DO play in the embedded WMP when I try them in Firefox 1.4.1.

Excellent news. Thanks for that update, Alice. Do you see the "Music Sampler" heading (should be right next to Real Player and WMP in the audio clips section) in 1.5 Beta2? Also, what do you think it is about 1.5 Beta2 (compared to 1.0.7) that causes WMP clips (at least in Amazon) to play?
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

The problem in Firefox 1.0.7 was the Mozilla ActiveX plugin. Once I disabled it, by renaming the Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\ npmozax.dll file to Xnpmozax.dll, then Firefox 1.0.7 also played the clips, as tested at
amazon.com > Music > Blowout Music > Bob Dylan's greatest hits > Listen to Samples

Figured it out after testing in Mozilla suite 1.7.12, which also worked at amazon.com (embedded WMP in a new window) while Netscape 7.2 had a similar problem as Firefox 1.0.7 (embedded WMP appeared but didn't work) ...... Since both Mozilla suite 1.7.12 and Firefox 1.4.1 did NOT have the Mozilla ActiveX plugin but Firefox 1.0.7 and Netscape 7.2 did, that pointed to the activeX plugin as a likely suspect.

Only IE6 shows the "music sampler". (IE opened WMP as an external application, by the way.)
Alice Wyman
Old BushVenom
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Post by Old BushVenom »

Alice, if you do a Wikipedia search for "analytical guru", your picture shows up right next to the title.

I renamed npmozax.dll and, sure enough, amazon.com music clips now play in Firefox with WMP (as well as Real Player). Excellent detective work. My compliments... :)
jtillnes
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Post by jtillnes »

Hmm... I have Firefox 1.41 (1.5 beta 2), and it doesn't work playing the wmp-clips on Amazon. It opens a small wmp-window and loads some files.. then it says done.. and nothing happens. How did you get it to work Alice?
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Vectorspace
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Post by Vectorspace »

Right-click on the player. Is 'error details' greyed out? If not, what does it say?
Is 'properties' greyed put?
"All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one" - Occam's Razor
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Vectorspace
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Post by Vectorspace »

As to the ActiveX issue, the ActiveX object lacks the type="application/x-oleobject" attribute. That, combined witth the fact that the media file is sent with the text/html MIME type could be why it won't work.
"All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one" - Occam's Razor
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0
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Alice
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Post by Alice »

bushvenom,
Thanks for the compliment :)

jtillnes wrote:Hmm... I have Firefox 1.41 (1.5 beta 2), and it doesn't work playing the wmp-clips on Amazon. It opens a small wmp-window and loads some files.. then it says done.. and nothing happens. How did you get it to work Alice?

For the record, when trying one of the amazon.com music samples under "Windows Media", I see the embedded Windows Media Player (r-click"about" shows Wmp10) on a white background in a new Firefox tab. At first nothing plays and I see "done" in the status bar, like you. If I wait awhile, the greyed-out Play button becomes active, then it changes into a "pause" button and the clip plays.

I went to Tools > Options > Tabs in Firefox 1.4.1 and UNchecked the option, "Force links that open new windows to open in...... (I had "a new tab" selected). When I did that, the amazon.com song samples opened a new small Firefox window with the embedded WMP. The first sample I tried, the music clip did NOT play, no matter how long I waited. I minimized the WMP window then opened it again and this time the sample played, but that must have been a coincidence since another sample played on the first try.

Only thing that comes to mind, assuming that your WMP plugin works OK on other sites and you don't have the Mozilla activeX plugin installed, is that either some amazon.com song samples take longer to start than others or possibly some clips need to be re-selected if they don't play on the first try.

You can check your WMP plugin here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 206213#wmp
or use these links:
* WMP Plugin test - Broadband: http://members.aol.com/jrzycrim01/mozil ... st-HS.html
* WMP Plugin test - Narrowband: http://members.aol.com/jrzycrim01/mozil ... st-LS.html

Hope that helps.
Alice Wyman
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Post by Ramona »

Things that make you go hmm... I had no problems playing the songs at Amazon - Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, using Mozilla 1.7.12? I have the npmozax.dll file installed, and didn't rename the file in order to get the music to play: Screen Shot.
lordbah
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Post by lordbah »

Just had the same problem. Renaming npmozax.dll got the audio to play. It still plays in a browser window, whereas I think it used to (a few months back) play in a new WMP window. Oh well.
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