Cannot install MP3 playback support; silently fails

I too experience the same problem, although I do not intend to purchase music in MP3 format, I was just curious.

The dialog states "MPEG Layer-3 audio decoding technology licensed from Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson."
Unless I'm mistaken, this seems to imply that you need to purchase MP3 playback in order to use certain Ubuntu One features as most of the content is in MP3 format anyway (this in itself seems to go against Canonical's statement "Ubuntu is free. Always has been and always will be.").

Anyway, I think the dialog alone is confusing enough to many users coupled with the issue that there are no messages given after an attempted install.

The notice at the top of the window, as previously stated, does say that it needs to be installed in order to listen to previews in the store. I don't think a purchase first is required in order to install the plugin, but then again I'm not a lawyer.

No purchase is required. The codec we install though, is in the partner repository and we have to show the license notice for it. It seems the package is still missing from the partner archive for Precise. Moving to the right place to get that added back.

i've tested this on my laptop now, and the package does install, and the mp3 warning bar does not come back up after restarting rhythmobx.

Guys...this is still broken for me. I can still reproduce the problem perfectly using the steps outlined above.

The workaround I've found was to manually install gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 from the Ubuntu Software Center.

I thought I actually ran into a similar problem with the Ubuntu One Music Store in Banshee on 11.10, so I went back to my up-to-date 11.10 partition and ran steps similar to the above there. Sure enough, the required playback support failed to install there as well, and the needed package(s) should have already long been available in Oneiric's repositories.

Can you please take another look into this? I have three partitions (Precise and 11.10 on my desktop, and Precise on my laptop) that I can easily reproduce this issue still on.

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 11:14:23PM -0000, Christopher Kyle Horton wrote:
> I thought I actually ran into a similar problem with the Ubuntu One
> Music Store in Banshee on 11.10, so I went back to my up-to-date 11.10
> partition and ran steps similar to the above there. Sure enough, the
> required playback support failed to install there as well, and the
> needed package(s) should have already long been available in Oneiric's
> repositories.

The packages were in fact never published for Ubuntu 11.10, but they have
been now for both 11.10 and 12.04. Can you check that you still see this
problem after doing an update of the package lists on your system (sudo
apt-get update)?

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
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I've now checked each of my three partitions.

On Precise, the bug still exists, no change whatsoever. I have updated my repository information several times on both machines and tried the above steps for Rhythmbox several times, but still no luck. It still does a search for plugins each time I try to play one of my MP3s or a preview in the store.

gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 and gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-mp3-partner both show in my results from running `apt-cache search gstreamer mp3` in a terminal however, so I know it's there for installation but the Ubuntu One Music Store is still somehow failing to install it.

On Oneiric, the problem is now fixed for the most part. Banshee required a restart before the playback support was working properly (and another restart to get rid of the MP3 playback missing message still at the top of the Ubuntu One Music Store), but I can confirm that the issue is finally fixed there.

Works fine here now on 12.04, both recent & beta1 installs with 1 small exception

Opening the music store in Rhythmbox & getting the prompt > clicking install
The partner repo is added & then gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-mp3-partner is installed

If trying to then preview a track without first closing & re-opening RB when the track is clicked on the codec search dialog opens. It will want to & will replace the above plugin with gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 & gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly

If instead RB is closed & re-opened then the previews play fine with previously installed gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-mp3-partner package.

So it's RB that's not able to 'recognize' that support has been added till it's restarted

In my case, it's flat-out not installing anything on 12.04. I can confirm this by checking whether the relevant packages are installed after an attempt.

I tried running Rhythmbox from a terminal to see if I could get it to produce any error messages; this output is in the attached file. The exact steps I took to produce this output:

1) Open Rhythmbox.
2) Go to the Ubuntu One Music Store.
3) Attempt to install the MP3 playback support as described above.
4) Find a preview and attempt to play it, canceling the alternative plugins window which comes up instead.
5) Close Rhythmbox.

I would be very curious to find out why it's working for all you guys and not for me, but I don't know how to go about properly debugging this.

Chris - I don't get any of the theme stuff but see the exact same from "** WARNING **: Error calling get_info: ...." & everything works, (as described

But if it stays on RB needing to re-start when that plugin is installed in RB, then most users will attempt to preview a track & likely replace it with the 2 other Gs plugins & deps.

That would somewhat defeat the purpose of having gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-mp3-partner in the first place

The theme stuff is most likely due to the 3rd-party icon theme I was using. That I think can be safely ignored...I was more worried about the Ubuntu One and plugin stuff it spat out near the bottom.

I would agree that the playback support is one of those things that should just work as soon as it is installed. Similar to what you said, you and I would likely try a restart to get the plugin to work like on Oneiric, but the average user isn't going to think of trying that. Instead, they'll try playing some music right away thinking they're all set, then they'll end up being offered plugins of questionable legality (i.e. US software patent concerns) and either install them when they don't need to or be scared off/confused by all the cryptic terminology and packages being shown to them.

Music playback is one of those things most casual users use their computers for, and 99% of the time their files will be in MP3 format whether we like it or not. That's why I find it distressing that, at least in my case, getting this basic functionality set up is horribly broken. I would sincerely hope I (and others) don't run into it again in the final LTS release.

This seems to be back again in 12.10, same as orig. described. The fluendo plugin is Never installed, user just keeps going around in the same circle.

I can confirm this is still the case in Ubuntu 13.04 Alpha 1. Worse yet, my earlier workaround of installing gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 manually no longer works. This apparently leaves me with no legal means of playing back mp3 files in Ubuntu.

It's disappointing that I have consistently run into this exact same bug now across all of my installs of the past three releases with no apparent fix available (with the sole exception of Oneiric). This is the sort of thing that forces me to keep Windows around. :/