Music Errors

July 12, 2006 8:07 PM

When MeFi Music launched, I couldn't upload songs because I'd get this error message: "The MIME type of the uploaded file "application/oct-stream" was not accepted by the server." Others reported the same problem, and something was done which made my uploads work. However, now I'm getting this message again.
posted by edlundart to MetaFilter Music at 8:07 PM (12 comments total)

I'm on Firefox 1.5.0.4 on WinXP.
posted by edlundart at 8:09 PM on July 12, 2006

Warning: I may not know what I'm talking about here.

But I am assuming this problem occurs because the server relies on your browser to tell it the Mime Type for the file.

The browser has a list of Mime Types and file extensions, so it knows which applications to open certain types of files with.

This list of Mime Types may be influenced by other software on your computer - you know how if you installed Brand New Media Player X, suddenly MP3 links in Firefox start opening in that program instead of the old Crappy Media Player Y you used to use?

I'm assuming this may be causing this problem. I may be wrong.
posted by Jimbob at 8:26 PM on July 12, 2006

What are you using the encode your files? and what format?
posted by cellphone at 8:37 PM on July 12, 2006

(Matt, is there some way to make the script ignore the MIME type of the received file, and either test if the file is an MP3 through some other method, or simply trust the extension? It's been so long since I've done any of this stuff.)
posted by Jimbob at 8:38 PM on July 12, 2006

My files are all mp3 files, rendered in FL Studio which uses the LAME encoder.
posted by edlundart at 8:52 PM on July 12, 2006

I was having the same problem, but like a doofus I didn't save the error it threw. It was something like... oh, wait. I posted it in the original announcement thread for Music.

"application/binary72e4b4"

I tried LAME, I tried the default Steinberg Wavelab encoder, I tried mp3PRO, and it still threw the same error. So I'm guessing that it is indeed a media player/device and browser issue.

I worked around it by logging in in IE and uploading from there. Worked fine. I do believe that my "default" in-browser media device for MP3s is Quicktime, for some screwed up reason. But my machines generally end up being absolutely Frankensteinian monsters of overlapping codec packs, media players and other software devices.

Also, note this handy graph Matt provided.
posted by loquacious at 8:56 PM on July 12, 2006

I seem to remember reading here on MetaTalk that Matt changed something in the code so that this wouldn't be a problem, and after reading that, uploading songs started working for me. But now the problem is back, so maybe this bit of code got reverted when making another update or something?

Jimbob, I'm sure there is something I can do on my end, but I'm not really sure what. And the situation seems a little clunky... if the mp3 file works in every other context, it's way over a lot of people's heads (including mine) why it wouldn't work to upload it to MeFi Music.

loquacious, I think I tried using IE back when I first had the problem, and now that you mention it, I think that seemed to work. But, I mean... IE... eww.

I guess I'll try to screw around with the MIME types in firefox. On a separate note... I keep thinking maybe there is some setting in firefox which will make the music keep playing even if I switch tabs or whatever. It seems it only allows flash to play if the flash file is in the active window. Does anyone have a workaround for that issue yet?
posted by edlundart at 9:03 PM on July 12, 2006

I relaxed the MIME types to include three different versions of mp3s. Currently, the only way to limit uploads by file type is by mime type (soon I will be able to change this to just .mp3 extensions). So yeah, it sounds like your browser is borked at the moment so you might want to try uploading with something else.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:06 PM on July 12, 2006

Yes, the mime-type has everything to do with the tool used to send the file (i.e. browser) and nothing to do with the actual content of the file, save perhaps its filename. So the tools used to encode/create the file are irrelevant, it's all about the browser.

Somewhere there is a Firefox extension that lets you edit mime-types (I think it was called "Things they left out") that you might be able to use to fix this. Or use IE, Opera, etc.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:09 PM on July 12, 2006

I see -- thanks for the tips. I'll look into that Firefox extension and see if I can figure anything out.
posted by edlundart at 9:16 PM on July 12, 2006

loquacious, I think I tried using IE back when I first had the problem, and now that you mention it, I think that seemed to work. But, I mean... IE... eww.

Yeah, no shit. I think it's the first and only time I've launched IE on this machine since my last rebuild about a year ago. The homepage was still set to MSN.com.
posted by loquacious at 9:35 PM on July 12, 2006

Woohoo -- to anyone having the same problem I was having, this seems to have solved it for me:

1. Install Mime Type Editor extension, which is hard to find, but a copy is available here.

2. Once successfully installed, close Firefox and open it again.

3. Go to Tools > Mimetypes...

4. Click "New Type" and add "audio/mp3". In the resulting dialog I left everything blank (minus the top field for MIME type which is set to "audio/mp3") and chose "open using default application."

NOTE: In my list of Mime-types, there was (strangely) no entry for "audio/mp3" which is why I tried adding it. If you already have an entry for it, this may not work, but then you can probably solve the problem by altering the settings in the mimetype editor.
posted by edlundart at 10:23 PM on July 12, 2006