Google Inline MP3 Player

Martin Brinkmann
May 20, 2008
Updated • Apr 18, 2016
Music, Music and Video
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Adam Pash is a Senior Editor at Lifehacker and also someone who likes to code. His latest gorgeous application is a Greasemonkey script called Google Inline MP3 Player which, once installed, displays a [Play] link next to each mp3 link on a website.

A click on that Play link embeds an inline mp3 player, more precisely Google Reader's MP3 Flash player, directly on the web page providing access to play the mp3 directly without having to download it first.

The [Play] link changes into a [Hide Player] link which when clicked hides the embedded player again normalizing the website in the progress. This is an excellent way to listen to the first few seconds of a mp3 before making the decision whether you want to download it completely.

The mp3 is actually downloaded to the user's cache which means that it is possible to grab it right of the cache instead of downloading it again. Great script Adam !

I like this way because I can listen to music directly without having to open an external application, in this case the music player.

Update: The script is not working anymore. I installed it in Google Chrome this time to see if it still works. While it displays the Play link and hide player links, it does not display the player controls anymore. Worse than that, you do not hear the music playing.

While there are some alternatives listed on the userscripts website, they all date back some time and the ones I tried, did not work as well. Please let me know if you are aware of an option that adds a player back to the browser. I have removed the link from this article as it is not really useful anymore.

Firefox users can install the Inline Audio Player extension for the web browser which adds a play link next to any mp3, wav, or ogg file linked directly on websites opened in the browser.

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Comments

  1. Justin said on November 30, 2011 at 10:18 am
    Reply

    The warning message about AAC streams when you load streams is because you don’t have the free Orban AAC/aacPlus Player Plugin installed.

    http://codecpack.co/download/Orban-aacPlus-Player-Plugin.html

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on November 30, 2011 at 10:56 am
      Reply

      Justin, thanks for the information.

  2. santosh said on December 1, 2011 at 12:43 am
    Reply

    does this support AAC ? or only mp3 streaming

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on December 1, 2011 at 1:43 am
      Reply

      I’d say it supports all pls streams but I have not tried that so cannot verify it 100%.

  3. Barnabas said on August 3, 2012 at 5:15 pm
    Reply

    Thank you Martin for a most informative and viable solution (it allowed me to play streams from a Netherland internet radio station in my WMP)! Continued success to you!

    Barnabas (USA)

  4. AppleRome said on October 7, 2012 at 7:31 am
    Reply

    Your steps’ recommendation is still valid until 7th October 2012.. Thank you very much !!

  5. Laura said on December 1, 2012 at 4:41 pm
    Reply

    Thank you!

  6. sak2005 said on December 9, 2014 at 8:03 pm
    Reply

    You must convert file.pls to file.m3u
    because file.pls open with winamp and file.m3u open with wmp.

  7. Lithium said on February 10, 2017 at 11:10 am
    Reply

    Hi
    2017 still kicking on Windows 7
    Thx a ton

  8. Dennis said on April 18, 2017 at 4:05 am
    Reply

    Hey, even i can do it, i stumbled through it and it works great! The only instruction advice i will add as i had to figure this out, when the wmp box opens that says save or open the bar on right says wmp click that drop down and select “open pls in wmp” once you do that it will work . Took me quite some time to discover that as i am no computer expert by any means. Having said that, previously i had downloaded codec packages and something about aac. None did any good. This rocks, i listen to a lot of internet radio and a number of them have dropped flash player and getting wmp to work had been a nightmare. So many thanks for this great solution to another problem that Micro-Hell will not even address. Peace- Out

  9. stephen marshall said on March 19, 2019 at 2:07 am
    Reply

    openplsinwmp came in a zip file. I unpacked it, and didn’t find anything that looks like an executable, and even the files in the “doc” folder were in a format windows didn’t recognize. I’m not stupid. you said it would open effortlessly. It didn’t. This a rabbit hole I don’t want to go down.

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