Plex Web not playing music

Server Version#: 1.19.5.3112
Player Version#: 4.39.1 (within Chrome 84.0.4147.104 [64-bit])
Server Host OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) Home version 1903
Client Host OS: Windows 10 (64-bit) Pro version 2004

I have been noticing that very little of my music will play in the plex web app. At first, I thought my files were corrupted, but I found out they play fine in PlexAmp running on the same computer where they will not play in the browser-app. I believe this is also affecting movie/tv playback as well – but NOT LiveTV for some reason.

I also checked PlexAmp on my phone, plus both the FireTV and Roku players and all three of those play my music fine.

The behavior is very strange… For example, I selected the album Quadrophenia by The Who and the web player started playing the first track and then just kinda stalled. But when it stalled, it changed the elapsed play time back to 0:00. Other times, it will “pretend” to play a song by showing the elapsed play time clock ticking away, but there’s no sound.

I’m confused how something so utterly fundamental could have been broken. Is there anything I can do to the web client to make it start working again?

I wonder what’s up in Plex land? I’ve never had a question [apparently] ignored for this long before.

I still cannot play many things (both MP3 and MP4) in the Plex Web Client that both PlexAmp and VLC can play just fine. Plus, the Roku and FireTV Plex apps also play all of my media. Only the Web client (running in the current Chrome on the current Win 10 Pro) cannot. It kinda sucks.

If you drag the mp3 or mp4 into the browser window will they play? We don’t do anything special with mp3/mp4 files if they can be direct played, which at least in the mp3 case I would imagine that is the case.

I would start to see if the browser you are using can play the files directly.

Do you experience this issue in every browser?

Dragging files into Chrome Version 84.0.4147.105 (Official Build) (64-bit) plays them perfectly. Playing either type in the plex web app (4.39.1) from PMS (1.19.5.3112) results in the “loading” spinner for MP4 and ‘silent’ playing for MP3.

I don’t use other browsers for Plex, but I tested with Firefox 79.0 (64-bit) and Edge 84.0.522.52 (Official build) (64-bit) and they play both types of media just fine. I even made sure I was logged in the same way, as the same user, requesting the same media to be played.

However, Live TV (from a HDHomeRun CONNECT Quatro tuner) works perfectly even under Chrome. I’m very confused about what I could check. Is there some Chrome option that could have been changed to prevent Plex from playing media?

I’m going to try to focus on one thing at a time as to not confuse the issue.

Starting with MP3s, you’re saying that Firefox and Edge are both able to play the mp3 using the plex app? When trying to play this same mp3 in Chrome when dragging the file into chrome the file plays correctly, but when played through plex it shows as “palying” but is silent?

As a sanity check, what happens when you play back the mp3 using chrome, but from an Incognito / Private Chrome session? I’m curious if there could be some Chrome Plugin or bad Local Storage state causing the issues.

We don’t do anything special with mp3s, we quite literally just ask the browser to play back the file.

As far as the mp4, is this container only an audio track? Or is this a video file with both a video and audio track?

Thanks for the incognito tip – things are playing OK in an incognito Chrome window, so it must be one of my add-ins that has suddenly started blocking Plex. Hmmm… I did add one not too long ago to prevent HTML5 auto-play (web sites that start playing audio/video the instant you land (often before the page actually renders) is, IMHO, simply evil. I will start experimenting to see if I can find out what is blocking the Plex app. I assume that the plex app plays Live TV differently than it would a movie, since Live TV works, but Movies don’t.

To answer the “playing but silent” question: I use Tautulli and the Plex management app on my phone to check my server and both showed that I was “playing” the music file, but nothing was happening on the actual player app – but when I clicked the STOP button (the little X in a box with the play controls) the “playing” status on the other locations went away. So I believe the server “thought” it was playing, but it was not. The same thing happens with movies, except the movies show an eternal “loading” animation (but without any % loaded value shown).

To answer the mp4 question, it was a movie. All my music is MP3 and all my movies are MP4. When I started, the Roku player was my primary target and I was told that MP4 was the preferred container for Roku.

Again, thanks for the incognito tip – sometimes I just need a kick in the right direction. I’m sure I can track it down now!

It turned out to be the Disable HTML5 Autoplay extension. Apparently the Plex web app appears (to the extension) to be using autoplay when I have manually requested that Plex play a media selection. I wonder why it doesn’t affect any other sites I have visited that play media… Site like Facebook and Youtube no longer automatically start playing, but they still play fine when I click their play buttons. Only the Plex Web player has this “problem.”

It never occurred to me that this could be the issue because I (wrongly) assumed that Plex streamed the audio and video media in some way that was different from however the HTML5 auto-play feature worked.

Oh well, I entered my Plex server (which unfortunately looks like plex.tv instead of MY server in the address bar) as an exception and everything plays just fine again.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

[PS: I just noticed that there may have been a hint from the Live TV that played: I always needed to click on the play button and then AGAIN on another, larger play button that would appear in the middle of the video area before it would actually start playing. So, apparently, the initial “play” actually causes a new page to load that tries to auto-play the requested video, but at least with Live TV, a play button appeared (possibly added by the extension that stopped the auto-play). I’m pointing this out in case any Plex developers see this and are interested in “correcting” the auto-play “issue.”]

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