Can't play Amazon Music Unlimited
Issue: Cannot play Amazon Music Unlimited.
Platform: Nvidia Jetson Nano
Processor: ARMv8 Processor rev 1 (v8l) × 4
OS: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Browser: Firefox for Ubuntu version 75.0b11 (64-bit)
Description: When I log into amazon.com, I can play music excerpts but when I go to Amazon Music, I get the following error: Playback disabled – Please enable playback settings for your browser.
I saw on an Amazon forum (https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00006zSzZVSA0/linuxplayback-disabled-message-in-firefox) that Amazon Music playback is not supported if you are using a Linux computer. Customers using other operating systems (including Linux, Chrome OS, Windows versions older than Windows 7 and versions of OSX below 10.9) can download purchased music directly through their computer's web browser.
However I hear other people are playing other Amazon Prime content using Linux so I suspect you can make it work if you get Widevine.
Reading the forums, I think my issue is that I need Widevine Digital Rights Management.
One forum (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm) said that Widevine would be installed (Firefox downloads and enables the Google Widevine CDM on demand, with user permission, to give users a smooth experience on sites that require DRM). They also have instructions on where to enable it in the Add-ons Manager Plugins panel, ellipsis icon next to Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc.
On the Add-ons Manager Plugins panel I don’t have Widevine listed. I see “OpenH264” and “Shockwave flash” but I do not see “Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google”.
It also said that you can always turn DRM playback on again by opening the Firefox Preferences General panel and, under “Digital Rights Management (DRM) Content”, putting a check mark next to “Play DRM-controlled content”. I don’t have “Digital Rights Management (DRM) Content” listed on the General panel.
I assumed that Widevine didn’t install on demand. So I found another forum that explained how to download the zip file from Google. I did the following steps to get the latest file and I put it in the plugins folder.
sudo wget https://dl.google.com/widevine-cdm/1.4.9.1088-linux-x64.zip
sudo unzip 1.4.9.1088-linux-x64.zip
sudo mv libwidevinecdm.so /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins
sudo chmod 644 /usr/lib/firefox-addons/plugins/libwidevinecdm.so
Still it doesn’t appear in my Plugins.
Questions:
• Do I need Widevine to play Amazon Music Unlimited? • If I do, how do I install Widevine?
Modified by Trevs7
All Replies (4)
I'm pretty sure you do need WideVine for Amazon Prime.
Normally Firefox can download and install the Widevine plugin in the background when a site requires it. (Watch DRM content on Firefox)
Some users have problems with automatic installation and need to download manually. Let's see whether these old instructions (adapted for the new design of about:config) work for you.
(1) Download a recent version for your platform
If you look at this source file -- https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-release/source/toolkit/content/gmp-sources/widevinecdm.json -- there seem to be multiple choices for Linux. I don't know which is most appropriate for your processor.
If you can't download, the redirect might be blocked. Check whether any of your add-ons or any external software block redirects. You also could test downloading in another browser.
(2) Extract/install the contents of the ZIP archive into a folder in your profile
Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either
- "3-bar" menu button > "?" Help > Troubleshooting Information
- (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
- type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter/Return
In the first table on the page, on the Profile Folder row, click the button labeled "Open Folder" or "Open Directory" This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in your system's file browser.
If you see a folder named gmp-widevinecdm, double-click into that folder.
If that folder does not exist: create a new folder with that name and then double-click into it.
Select and copy the current version as the next folder name: 4.10.1582.2
Create a new folder with that name and then double-click into it. So now you are here:
[profile.folder]\gmp-widevinecdm\4.10.1582.2
Finally you can drop the contents of the ZIP archive here:
- LICENSE.txt
- manifest.json
- libwidevinecdm.so
-
widevinecdm.dll widevinecdm.dll.libwidevinecdm.dll.sig
(3) Check preferences
Presumably Firefox will discover that new Widevine folder at your next startup, but possibly you would also need to create some settings.
Here are custom settings I see:
(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.
(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste widevinecdm and pause while the list is filtered. You should see at least these two:
- media.gmp-widevinecdm.enabled => true
- media.gmp-widevinecdm.visible => true
Double-click false to flip to true if needed
(C) If you do not see a media.gmp-widevinecdm.abi preference, paste that into the search box. Firefox should show it on a bar with you choice of preference type -- select String -- and + button to add it. The value should match the platform string of the plugin you installed, such as Linux_x86_64-gcc3 -- you can copy paste that from the source code page.
(D) If you filter using wide again, if you do not see a media.gmp-widevinecdm.version preference, paste that into the search box. Firefox should show it on a bar with you choice of preference type -- select String -- and + button to add it. The value should match the version of the plugin you installed, which is currently 4.10.1582.2 (as of this writing).
Does that help?
Modified by jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
Try the Firefox version from the official Mozilla server if you currently use a version from the repositories of your Linux distribution.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I opened the .json file and saw the following choices for Linux.
“Linux_x86_64-gcc3" "Linux_x86_64-gcc3-asan" "Linux_x86-gcc3"
Unfortunately they are all for x86. None for ARM.
There is one choice for ARM but not for Linux.
"WINNT_aarch64-msvc-aarch64"
I assume that means there is no way to run Widevine on an ARM platform running Linux.
Modified by Trevs7
You can do a Google search to get some suggestions for using Widevine on an ARM platform.