Technical Error with Rhapsody on Linux

I use Rhapsody's streaming service from within Firefox 2.0 on Linux. It works as a Firefox plugin.

Recently (maybe when upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10?) it refused to play any music. I found a couple of issues:

1. It wouldn't authenticate me properly. I found that by deleting all my Rhapsody cookies and restarting Firefox that problem went away.
2. It simply refused to play music, each time reporting a "Technical Error". Selecting "Try again" never worked and it eventually crashed Firefox.
   

The cause of the technical error appears to be due to the "esd" process running under Gnome. ESD apparently is a mixer that lets multiple apps play sound at the same time (it probably does a lot more too).

A number of people suggest killing it and that worked for me.

• 
  http://www.gregwhitescarver.com/blog/2006/10/10/why-rhapsody-doesnt-work-in-ubuntu


• 
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=394127


• http://real.lithium.com/real/board/message?board.id=InstallingRhapsody&thread.id=23279

The steps are:

1. Open a terminal window
2. killall esd
3. Restart Firefox
4. Use Rhapsody again

This works every time for me.

I'm speculating that Rhapsody refuses to work when that is running to try and prevent people from capturing the streaming audio?

I currently have an issue open with Real Networks. I documented the above workaround but outlined that it would be great if it either gave a much more obvious error message, or worked without requiring termination of esd. Here was their last reply. I don't hold out much hope.

Hello,

My name is ******. I am a Real Networks Tier 2 Technical Support Representative. Your case has been escalated to our department due to severity. Thank you for your continued patience, and I would like to apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced so far.

I have followed this thread since the day you initiated it. As I understand it you wish for a better work-around to technical errors playing Rhapsody Online content. I can help you with this.

I have forwarded the information regarding this work-around to the Rhapsody team for further investigation. However since there is limited support for Linux and Rhapsody Online I do not know if/when another solution will be available.

Please reply to this email with any further questions or concerns.

Thank you,

RealNetworks Technical Support
Tier 2 Escalation Department