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April 24, 2016

Google Play Music Still Requires Flash

I uninstalled Flash Player on my computer, now that most sites no longer need it. Adobe's Flash Player is still bundled with Chrome, so I had to disable it from the chrome://plugins/ page.

One of the only Google services that still requires Flash is Google Play Music, but only if you don't use Chrome or Internet Explorer 11. I tried opening Google Play Music in Firefox and Safari and got this message: "Missing Flash Player. You need the latest Adobe Flash Player to listen to music."


There's actually a Lab experiment called "HTML5 audio" in the settings and it's grayed out and disabled. It claims that it allows you to "listen to your music without the need for Flash. Support for this lab is still experimental, and it may not work in all cases," informs the description.


Well, it looks like the Lab experiment only works in Chrome, not in other browsers. It's hard to tell why HTML5 audio is still an experiment and not a regular feature that works in all browsers. YouTube's HTML5 player works well in most browsers and Google Play Music uses the same back-end.

15 comments:

  1. I wonder what technology the HTML 5 player is using under the hood. You'd think more than just Chrome would support it.

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  2. I think the HTML5 works only in Chrome because of the DRM plugin!?

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  3. The issue has been reported on Google Play Help Forum, and so far no solution:
    https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/play/dLW3mQk4ZTQ/6qBdgMduAAAJ

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  4. HTML5 video and HTML5 audio are two separate technologies. Support for HTML5 audio may still have issues in other browsers, or not support whatever codec or DRM Google Music uses.

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  5. I think it's because of the required audio codecs? If I remember correctly, firefox doesn't support the same ones as Chrome. I can kind of understand that Google doesn't want to keep two or more copies of every song?

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    Replies
    1. But those "codecs" aren´t either on Chromium?
      I have Chromium 51.0.2683.0 (64-bit) and also requires Adobe Flash to playback.

      I can add that the web player loosk like works without Adobe Flash (works on HTML5 on Safari) if you don´t have the "Unlimited" subscription.

      Delete
  6. Actually you are wrong. Google play music works without flash at least on Firefox nightly.
    You just, sometimes, need to force it -look at this bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=911837

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  7. Google Finance also requires the Flash.

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  8. The HTML5 Lab _used_ to work on browsers other than IE11 and Chrome, but sometime in the first 3 months of 2015 they changed that.

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  9. I know your expertise on this. I must say we should have an online discussion on this. Writing only comments will close the discussion straight away! And will restrict the benefits from this information. ciara new songs

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  10. Wait there are google chrome users who can actually use HTML5? I've been using Chrome and GPM for a long time together and that option was removed from mine long ago.

    http://imgur.com/a/hr5aq

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  11. So useful post


    http://www.apkstub.com/2017/12/google-play-music.html

    ReplyDelete

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