I appreciate everyone's messaging and "trial & error" reporting .... until I stumbled on this thread, I was infuriated that I couldn't figure out "what I was doing wrong".

It seems to me the ugly little truth that no one wants to say out loud is: Google Play is designed to discourage downloading the music you listen to -- Firefox gives me the freedom to download the media it plays for me .... Google handcuffs Firefox to prevent downloads -- the ONLY function they disable is playback.

There may be enormous copyright implications that Google has to protect themselves from, or maybe they just don't want to be a music hosting/transfer service .... Anyway, the IE Tab suggestion works for me (which, coincidentally, disables media downloading capabilities) and thanks again for everyone's info.

I had a chance today to test the various workarounds discussed above on my Windows 7 32-bit desktop, as opposed to Win 7 32-bit laptop results I'd been reporting on above.

The result for my Win 7 desktop, the one where I had to fresh install everything a month ago due to a HD failure, was a mixed bag. In terms of getting GM to play, the running FF 11 in safe mode with all add-ins disabled continued to work just fine as it had on my laptop yesterday.

However, for some unknown reason, I couldn't get the IE Tab approach to work on my desktop running FF 11. Anytime I tried to launch GM set to open in IE Tab, the window opened blank and it was like something had stopped it from populating the webpage. I tried with several of the different IE compatibility settings, including the IE 8 Forced mode that worked on my laptop and for others here. But none of those settings gave me any different result on the desktop.

And before trying all this on my desktop, I made sure I had all my add-ons and plug-ins up to date using the FF checker.

The only other meaningful difference I could figure from my laptop was that my desktop today was running FF 11, whereas my laptop last night auto upgraded to FF 12 early on in my various testing. Today, my desktop tried to upload to FF 12, but the FF server must have been having a problem because the download kept failing.

jfchandler -- I have always been able to play GM with FF (all versions including 12) while using IE Tab add-on. The only problem is that IE Tab consumes too much memory which slowed down my FF as well as not responding at times (I suspect there's a heavy script loading with this add-on.) So I am going to stick with Chrome and Chrome View add-on until I found the reason of the high memory consumption of IE Tab. Though I would prefer not using any add-ons at all and just use FF (not in Safe Mode) to play GM. Maybe one of these days someone will find a solution.

Silk, there appears to be at least three different versions of IE Tab add-ons listed with Mozilla, so I'm not sure which one you're having a problem with. I've been using what I think was the original version for many years, and never found it to create any memory issues on any of my machines... And for example, my laptop I'm using now has only 2 GB running Win 7, and I never have any memory shortage issues, with IE Tab in use or without.

As I mentioned above, the IE Tab 2 method using the 4131 version worked great last night for GM on my laptop, but for reasons that escape me, I couldn't get it to work at all today on my desktop with GM -- even though I use IE Tab on my desktop machine all the time for various other websites where FF creates issues. To be clear, on my desktop machine with IE Tab 2 selected, I couldn't even load the GM page... I never got to the point of actually trying to play a song.

This whole GM thing on FF certainly is a mess... and the results people are getting aren't even the same when they use the same methods on different machines. It's a very quirky problem.

jfchandler: To be specific on my first comments regarding IE Tab options, I had the exact same problem with IE Tab 2 trying to connect to certain IE sites... blank screen. Gladly it appears to be working fine now in FF 12 across the board and is back on top of my list.

I became swamped with some clients yesterday and today so will try to do some bench testing tonight regarding XP and recreating some of the mentioned recent GM issues.

jfchandler -- I have tried all three versions of IE Tab (including the Plus) and everyone of them has the same result, causing my FF to respond very slowly. However, as I said, it only happened when I use GM with IE Tab, I don't have problems when I use IE Tab with other sites.

I guess I'll try again today to see if the FF servers will let me download FF 12 (on top of my current FF 11) and install that on my desktop machine, and then retry everything there, and see if it makes any difference.

My Win 7 32 bit laptop with FF 12 continues to work fine for GM both using 1] FF 12 in Safe Mode, and 2] FF 12 running IE Tab 2 ver 4131 and opening the GM window there. So those appear to be stable for me on that machine.

A brand new suggestion, which gets my Google Play to function FLAWLESSLY ... set the Music Manager to "Start automatically when computer is restarted" & for Google Accounts, "Stay signed in". Total functionality, NO conflicts with ANY of my plugins or addons, better performance than with IE -- as long as I give Google a full-time connection to my computer I can listen with Firefox .... apparently Big Brother is not interested in an on/off relationship.

Thanks again, all & good luck!

tc06rtw -- I think you might have solved the mystery after all! Thank you.

I have my Google Music Manager disabled at Startup since I don't use it that much, I guess that's why the Google Play does not work. I remember now that when it was working with FF back then, I had the Music Manager started at Startup all the time.

FYI, I did not have my Google Account (basically, just Gmail) signed in when I restarted my laptop. So I suspect your solution will still work as long as the Music Manager is open at startup.

Hopefully, we won't have the problem with Google Play anymore. I'll post my status in a few days.

Thank you again.

--I have always been automatically signed into google --I have always had Music Manager configured as you suggest

It makes no difference on my system.

I notice some of the people for whom this was working suddenly had FF 12.

I figured why not (against my better judgment) and upgraded.

Suddenly, it works EVEN THOUGH I still block Google analytics.Now works on both Vista and Xp machines.

I suspect, frankly, the answer is not any fiddling we've done. Someone changed something somewhere behind the scenes, whether Google or Mozilla.

Of course, there is always a dark cloud---the new upgrade killed an extension or two.

monsieurms -- I am glad it's working for you also now. It has been two days and I am still able to use Google Play within FF. However, I doubt if FF 12 was the cause (or it could be for some users) as after I updated to 12, GM still won't work. Then I followed tc06rtw's advice, to let the Music Manager automatically start at REBOOT and ever since GM has been playing in FF without any problems.

So for those users who still have the problem with GM, I would suggest to do either or both of the following:

1. Update to FF 12 2. Let the Music Manager open at all times

Yes, you weren't doing X and I wasn't doing Y, and now that we're both doing both....it works.

Ditto on that for me.. On my Win 7 32 bit desktop PC, where I finally was able to upgrade to FF 12, I had always had the Google Music app installed and running from Windows startup...

I'm pretty certain I was still having problems accessing Google Music before under FF 11 with that same setup. But I think I was launching GM from a bookmark in my browser, and was having failure to play problems going that way.

Now because of TC's suggestion above, instead of launching from a bookmark, I'll be in FF 12 and launch the music player from the Music Manager app in my taskbar and its button that says "Go to Music Player." When I take that approach, it opens a GM window in FF 12 and will play music from there.

There's only one small glitch with that, at least in my case. Every time I follow that path I just described above, the FIRST album or song I try to play hangs and won't play, with just a perpetually recycling little circle showing. But if I stop that, and then choose any other song or album, they'll all play fine on demand from that point forward.

jfchandler -- I don't know if opening GM from a bookmark is the problem. I have been opening GM from my bookmark and have no problem. It has been a week now and everything is fine with GM.

Thanks for that info and clarification...

Just to test it here on my Win 7 32 bit desktop, I went back into GM tonight...first signing out and then signing back in again using my FF 12 browser.

I called the GM webpage using my FF bookmark -- not the link in the GM app -- and indeed it displayed the same behavior I mentioned above -- playing fine in GM, but only after the first attempted song fails, and I go on and choose a second song or album.

So it would seem, at least in FF 12, you can launch GM either from a FF bookmark or the player link in the GM app, and it will perform the same either way.

But is anyone else having the same problem where every time, the first attempted song or album won't play (and just displays the spinning circle), while the second and all subsequent attempts play fine?

When I've encountered the spinning circle/non playing issue on the first attempted play, I've let it go for some time...and it never seems to resolve by itself. I have to select some other song or album after that initial choice, and then everything else plays fine.

jfchandler -- Are you using the old GM bookmark (the same one you were having problem with GM)? After I fixed the problem, I deleted my old bookmark, clear my cache and cookies (for GM) and then created a new Bookmark for GM, and it works.

Silk, as I mentioned above, GM is working for me almost fine now...with FF 12 and the GM app set to run from Windows startup. The only problem I'm having is with GM stalling the first time I go to try to play any song. Then once I choose any second song, it plays fine from that point onward.

As for your question, I did delete and create a new FF bookmark for GM once we got the problems pretty well identified here. I have my FF cookies set to delete upon closing my browser each time. And I did clear my cache in FF as well.

I should also note, I'm often traveling outside the U.S. when I'm listening to GM, so that locational issue might contribute to how GM interacts with my system in some way different than the average folk.

Is this issue officially put to bed? I tried setting Music Manager to start automatically when the computer is restarted, restarted my computer and am still unable to use Google Music on Firefox without getting the "Please refresh this page in your browser.." error message.

I'm running Firefox 15.0.

I haven't experienced these hang-ups for a long time .... the newest version of Google's Music Manager has worked like a charm for me. If you haven't done so, I would suggest you COMPLETELY uninstall Music Manager from your PC (and delete all its data folders as well), then using FIREFOX, log into your Google Play account and click on "UPLOAD MUSIC" and it will offer to install the new version of Music Manager .... since I did that, I haven't had any conflicts with any settings & Firefox plays fine. Good luck!