New Webplayer not working

[TurtleDance]

Through brief reads in the forum I figured out that I've been selected to now use the open.spotify.com webplayer app. It simply doesn't function on Firefox, Windows 7 pro.

It won't play at all.

I've opened play.spotify.com on IE, and it's working. Phew.

I couldn't find how to report the issue to spotify directly, so I'm posting here in hopes spotify will see it and address the issue.

[Tom]

Hello,

This issue has already been reported, you can view that here:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Chrome-56-Broken-Web-Player/idi-p/1602198

Thank you for letting us know though!

[jazzcity]

Surely this is a different issue to the one you linked to?

The issue you linked to was with Chrome and was reported in March.

The issue reported here is with Firefox and started (for me at least) in the last ten days.

Do you have any information about the issue with respect to Firefox (v53.0).  I am on W7 Pro 64bit.

Thanks.

[Sebasty]

Hi, yes open.spotify.com doesn't work for me either. Both on Chrome and Firefox.

I installed an add-on that fools the webpage into believing I'm using IE or Edge (both load up play.spotify.com).

If you're comfortable with installing and using add-ons, try this one. It's really basic, but works easily for me.

After you've installed it and restarted your Firefox, choose either Edge or IE from the desktop browsers' selection and Windows as the operating system.
Into the tab that says "all_urls" type in play.spotify.com.

That should open the older web player which works.

(frankly, choosing Firefox as the desktop browser works too, for me.)

About the issue: There are people using iOS, Windows and Unix-like systems with browsers ranging from Firefox (and its sub-projects) to Chrome that have this issue. It's being looked into. 🙂

Let me know if you have further questions!

Seb

[Sebasty]

Little changes in things!

Hey @jazzcity!
I discovered that the web player issue could be caused by entries in Windows' hosts file.  Reming the entries, the player starts to work. Now, do you have administrator rights?
Notepad++ would help too, but it's pretty easy to modify it with general Notepad as well.

Looking forward to your answer. 🙂

Seb

[jazzcity]

Fire away, I'd be interested to see the details.

[Sebasty]

If you're using Notepad (and don't have Notepad++ installed), open Notepad as administrator.
Choose Open from the File menu.
To the File Path paste this: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
When you can't see anything, choose "All Files" instead of "Text Documents". Then you should see a few files. Choose the one named 'hosts'.

Now please tell me what do you see. 🙂

Seb

[jazzcity]

Never mind, this is getting messy. Thanks anyway.

[Sebasty]

Alright, understood. 🙂

I hope that the addons work for you!

Seb

[ElvisPolanski]

Hi SebastVAIO, thanks for the info.

Do you happen to know what particular lines in the hosts file are causing this issue with Spotify player?

After solving the problem with the addon thing, I'm back to research since that fix has stopped working.

Thanks!

[Sebasty]

Hey @ElvisPolanski!

See this thread's Solution part.
If commenting out Spotify's and fastly's didn't work yet, try commenting out all the entries (except for those you know, if you use that file for something).

Let me know how it goes! 🙂

Seb

[jdwohlever]

Your "solution" does nothing.
I even tried using an agent switcher. Tried setting Firefox, IE, etc. No difference.
No add-ons.
Flash enabled for Spotify.
FIrefox 57+ (Quantum)
Pressing Play doesn't do anything.
Works fine in Chrome, but Chrome is awful for other reasons.

[Tom]

Hey there!

Firstly, sorry for the late reply. 

I’m sorry to hear you are still experiencing issues with the Spotify web player. Just to confirm, the issue is that no dogs play, when you click play nothing happens? And that you have also tried on several other browsers? If you could confirm that, just so we’re on the same page. 

Thanks,

Tom

[BlackbeardII]

After some self research I found the cause:
The problem is with a flag in Firefox.
In About:config there is a flag called "media.autoplay.enabled"
By default is true
However, due to so many **bleep** websites adding auto play videos and autoplay ads that blast the user without their consent, most people change that flag to False.
The way it's SUPPOSED to work, is the user has to hit the PLAY button videos etc. for the media to play.
For some reason, the spotify webplayer is not accepting the play button as activation.
WIth this flag at true, the player works.
But, myself and many others refuse to have this flag on true because of stated above reasons.
Chrome has a similiar flag, (they call it "user gesture) but because of their ad network and revenue, it doesn't work on most sites anyway because crappy sites found a loophole around Chromes implemention.
I refuse to go back to using a web that Chrome decides for me.
So, is there a way the web player can be adjusted to allow activation by user gesture?

[jazzcity]

"The problem is with a flag in Firefox.
In About:config there is a flag called "media.autoplay.enabled"
By default is true"

Agreed.  When I changed this FF setting back to the default of 'true' Spotify worked for me. But that was not a solution because I needed the flag to be 'false' for all the other web sites that insist on auto-playing junk.

My workaround since my posts above six months ago has been to use a different browser solely for Spotify and I use FF for everything else.  Slightly annoying but it got around the problem.

[jdwohlever]

Agreed.
Having to use another browser for one website/app is ridicules.