[Web Player] [Opera] Can't get past 'enable your browser' page

[llkcbr]

I'm trying to use Opera to access the Web Player at open.spotify.com and I couldn't get past the "Enable player in your browser" page. I visited the support page and understood that Opera's no longer officialy supported, but I still would like to understand what exactly is 'drm content playback' in order to try to figure out an way to keep using Spotify from Opera, or why it would be impossible to do so. I should possibly mention somewhere that I'm a Linux user, but I'm pretty sure all required codecs are installed.

Thank you in advance for the attention.

[Sebasty]

Hey @llkcbr

That's a little strange, the support article says to me that it's supported.

DRM is a collection of ways used to protect copyrighted content by technological means. In Spotify's (and also Netflix and a few others) case it's about protecting the streamed content. It's a really widespread method, actually!
Firefox' support article may have some useful information.

Looking into Opera and DRM, it seems that Opera doesn't support it out of box- "Opera does not include any restricted codecs (for example, H.264 or MPEG) since they couldn't afford the necessary fees to distribute them."
All of the users asking about it are on some unix system.
It's probably possible to get it to work, but it's a lot of hassle.

I suggest reading this community thread on this issue. There are quite a few interesting posts and tips that could potentially help. 🙂

Firefox and Chrome should work.

Hope this helps 🙂

[hans-jürgen]

I'm using the Windows version of Opera 52 which works fine with the Spotify web player. You might have to install the Adobe Flash plugin on your Linux system though and allow it to be used in the Opera settings. If you don't want or cannot do that, try using a user-agent switcher add-on to change your browser ID to e.g. Google Chrome:

https://mybrowseraddon.com/useragent-switcher.html

This is necessary for Deezer since a few days, too, because they block Opera by the user-agent ID now, but show a misleading error message about a missing Flash plugin, although it is installed. After installing the switcher add-on you can enable HTML5 in the Deezer settings again, as Opera supports HTML5 playback.

[llkcbr]

Hey Sebasty,

Thank you for your answer and for the resources you've linked.

It is indeed very strange, I don't have access to my main machine right now, but I'll link the article where I couldn't find Opera listed as a support browser when I do so we can get that out of the way. ahahahaha

I'm familiar with DRM and Opera's lack of out-of-the-box codec support. I've manually installed both H.264 and MPEG support, though, along with Adobe's Flash, so it's neither of those things... The Firefox article you linked has been really helpful in pinning what precisely is Chrome's and Firefox's "DRM Support": it's a plugin for dynamic encryption and decryption of streamed content called Widevine, developed by an Google-owned company. I'll look for Opera Widevine support or something similar (it seems Adobe also has some DASH-encryption plugin supported by Spotify and Netflix) in a few days and post what I found out here before marking the thread as solved. I will also try just changing Opera's user agent like the other answer suggested just to be sure.

Once again, thank you for the support and the resources. :3

[llkcbr]

Thank you for your answer, Hans.

It seems to me that the issue might be a little deeper than just the UA, but I'll try that before messing into content encryption plugins and the such and tell you what I found.

(Please forgive me for the poorly formatted answers, are there any general guidelines on how to use these boards? Where can I find them?)

[hans-jürgen]

It is a known issue on the Deezer support forum, also other Linux users had already posted about it on Reddit, one of them giving the solution to use a user-agent switcher add-on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/deezer/comments/8cxobm/deezer_on_opera_tries_to_use_flash_no_html5/

https://en.deezercommunity.com/got-an-idea-9/opera-support-8661

Your postings look good to me, but you can always edit them later if something goes wrong.