How to get around Pandora’s 40 hour music limit

Comment from John Burnett
Time: August 30, 2009, 10:10 am

…wait. Would you publish an article explaining how to pirate software? This is effectively what this one is doing. Pandora is providing a service, and due to circumstances out of their control, they’re charging for those services to cover their costs. Subverting that is simply stealing. As someone who “loves Pandora”, the submitter certainly has an interesting way of showing it, just to save 99 cents a month. Good job mac geek.

Comment from g.b
Time: August 30, 2009, 10:32 am

Agreed that this is piracy. Seems like a waste of time for 99 cents. How long did it take to write this piece? Is this site advocating theft from Pandora?

Comment from someguy
Time: August 30, 2009, 11:22 am

I mean it’s not like you’re doing anything illegal, all it took was deleting some cookies off your hard drive. I wouldn’t compare that to cracking software which is copyrighted; totally different.

Comment from anymouse
Time: August 30, 2009, 11:30 am

pandora is a free service that you pay for to get premium features. deleting cookies stored on your own system from a free service is definitely NOT pirating.

Comment from Illuminatise
Time: August 30, 2009, 5:43 pm

Fell out of me chair laughing. Unless you have a strong vested interest in pandora and have money on the line, you’re just a nosey neighbor who has nothing better to do than prop the system up and be a tool. Are you kidding me with this stuff?

Anyhow, here is another way to get a work around to this problem:

1) Go to following path:

C:\Users\(FIND YOUR USER NAME)\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\EE33GMD9

2) Delete Pandora
3) Open FireFox/Tools/Options/Privacy/Show Cookies
4) Delete Pandora
5) Restart Firefox
6) Go to Pandora.
7) Enjoy while pissing off the public WWW watch dog groups.

Comment from Terrence Brown
Time: August 31, 2009, 9:24 pm

What system? Sounds like anything you can’t steal belongs to the “system.” That “system” keeps you alive stupid. Stop accepting things propped up by the “system” and let’s see how long you last. You’ll be in under a cactus in the desert with no Mac.

p.s. Too many of these articles are about stealing.

Comment from NR
Time: August 31, 2009, 10:45 pm

Who is pandora “stealing” from? You really think the music g-nome project is in it for the happiness of it all. Put up a web site and we can wave our magic wands a be high on music. Why , that’s enough for any gnome!.

I hope you pay your 99 cents EVERY month. put it on pay pal (they aren’t in it for you money either, are they?) it doesn’t take long only about 99 cents of your time. Hey that’s fair and you get to listen to music–for only 99 cents…on the internet! That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Isn’t it?
NR

Comment from RSTURIM
Time: September 1, 2009, 5:19 am

Completely uncool. Pandora is a great service struggling to make it. They proposed a good compromise at an amazingly reasonable price.

It’s these tactics that put a tiny company like Pandora at risk. C’mon, be responsible and help the little guy

Comment from Losbot
Time: September 9, 2009, 12:05 pm

Struggling to make it? They “struggled” & made $125m last year. LMAO!!

Comment from your a joke
Time: September 22, 2009, 10:16 am

Are you kidding these guys make millions through their advertising now i have to give them my credit card info for this. I wouldnt want them to have my personal info. Thanks for the fix!!!

Comment from l.m.orchard
Time: September 24, 2009, 6:10 am

Seriously? You’ve listened to 40 hours of music from their service for free, used their matching software as your personal DJ—and when they only want a buck for the rest of the month, you stiff ‘em?

Douchebag leech.

Comment from pandora herself
Time: September 27, 2009, 3:23 pm

how dare you steal an entire 99 cents from me oh my god. this is an outrage what kind of sick bastard would steal 99 cents. holy fuck

Comment from SteamyReamy
Time: September 27, 2009, 6:12 pm

This is piracy! Like overseas Somali vagrant muslim piracy! You are a pirate like the pirate bay! You are worse! I am shocked and appalled that you are providing this information! The internet is not for information! Wait, would you explain how to pirate software? Would you explain what the weather is like today? You thief! Dirty douche bag leech thief! You are making some record exec very sad right now, he had to buy FOUR BENTLEYS instead of FIVE this year and you are the very reason why! Leechy bag of information providing douche! Holy the fuck! Completely not in the cool zone! You are Stealing! 99 cents of thief! I am going home and never coming back to you information givers again!

Comment from TechlesCrunchles
Time: September 28, 2009, 9:12 am

Hey author you should just pony up the $0.99 you broke ass, I don’t know what’s worse, you and your cheapass refusing to pay less than the price of a coffee for a music service or the douchebags complaining about you posting a ‘how to delete cookies’ guide. Hey you complaining douche bags, Pandora is doing just fine even with the few people deleting their cookies to get the service free. You’re all idiots! Pandora is profitable and doing fine!

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/pandora-from-near-death-to-profitability-in-a-year/

Comment from Therepresentative
Time: September 29, 2009, 3:14 pm

Have any of you considered the possibility that we might not have a credit card we can use due to the fact that we dont use credit cards and pandora doesn’t accept paypal?

OR THE FACT THEY DONT TAKE MY FREACKING AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD.

To some people the crimped system of payment collection is literally impossible to deal with, because im not signing up for another credit card just to listen to pandora.

Why dont you high and mighty rich kids get used to the idea that not everyone has a black card from every credit card provider in the world.

In addition to that, i know plenty of people who dont even have credit cards, period.

FINALLY, it is the responsibility of pandora to fix this issue. as soon as they add more payment options id be glad to pay the money.

Comment from cory
Time: September 29, 2009, 5:05 pm

some people are nuts. it’s certainly not “stealing” anything if they place files on your computer. you can delete whatever the heck you want on your computer. maybe they’re at fault for making it so easy. i’m just saying. AND no one is forcing you to delete these files. if you don’t like it, no worries. to each his own.

thanks osxdaily.

Pingback from Get Past Pandora Listening Limit | Tech4eleven
Time: September 29, 2009, 5:48 pm

[...] one of your email addresses. This way you can listen to the same station(s) you usually do.Then, as OSXDaily.com writes, on [...]

Comment from Jay
Time: October 16, 2009, 9:13 am

I can’t believe that I am reading all those incredulous comments about stealing!

How in the world is it stealing if I delete cookies from my own computer? These ignorant morons need a lesson in private property rights. They are the same people who will say “the cops don’t need a search warrant” and “if you have nothing to hide, you should have nothing to fear” and have no clue why there different branches of the government or even how many different branches of the government there are.

Pandora should have a better technical system. And it looks like they do have it in place now where they keep count of the hours listened on their end.

Anyhow, a great way to get rid of those pesky flash cookies, which just do not go away unless you delete them manually, which are so good that even whitehouse.gov uses them and can track your moves (http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/you-deleted-your-cookies-think-again/) – is the firefox addon Better Privacy https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623

Comment from Russell
Time: October 27, 2009, 3:01 pm

In Windows 7, the folder is:
C:\Users\NAME_HERE\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects
The Documents & Settings is blocked or non existent.
My hours remain the same, but I was signed out.

Any Luck with any other 7 users?

Comment from Kenneth Kasajian
Time: November 3, 2009, 12:20 am

LOL. Too funny.

I think you should write an app to do this, and sell it for $5. I bet someone will buy it, and no one will pirate it.

Comment from Mark
Time: December 1, 2009, 7:07 pm

This won’t work, atleast not any more, otherwise when you went from computer to computer you would get a new 40 hours. I use a computer here at school that clears all files every night – it actually reverts all files back to their original status at every reboot – and every time I log into pandora the hour count starts at 40, but 20 seconds later it downloads the information and it reflects the real amount of hours I have, and @Russel, this is on an XP machine, so I am calling this fake, or out of date and not just an issue win Win 7.

Comment from Pandora Limit Sucks
Time: December 4, 2009, 12:22 pm

@Mark,

it works fine but obviously if you are using a pandora account that is logged in it stores the session information within your login as well so of course if you exceed the logged in limit it will do that. this is a recent change on pandora’s side but you can still reset your pandora cookies like this site says how to and it will reset your hour limit. i do it once a month on average and it is fine. i like pandora but i dont like the riaa so i do not support, i say reset cookies and let the music stay free like john lennon wanted.

-Nicholas

Comment from Kyle
Time: December 15, 2009, 10:09 pm

Stealing, lying, taking advantage… whatever you call it, it just isn’t right.

Professional musicians get paid by licensing organizations who police the internet and other piracy sources on behalf of musicians’ legal rights. Pandora pays theses licensing organizations for the rights to broadcast of this music. Paying Pandora users make this all possible.

Pandora has built some terrific technology providing a great convenience to its users, and it should be rewarded. If you want free music, go to MySpace and find the original artists posting it themselves.

The attitude, “I’m not hurting anyone,” actually hurts everyone. Pick up an economics text book.

And John Lennon was making music when music piracy was technologically impractical and he was a millionaire already.

Original works of art should be supported so we can continue to have works by original artists.

If you’re deleting cookies, you are circumventing the technology used by Pandora and its licensors to protect content accessible via the Pandora Services in direct violation of the deal you made with Pandora.com.

Your character is defined by what you do when nobody’s watching. If you need to re-read the promise you made to Pandora, click http://www.pandora.com/legal.

Comment from Shawn
Time: December 22, 2009, 1:54 pm

I find it funny how people rationalize themselves. The end result is the same no matter how you achieve it. If you could steal a car from your neighbor by blinking your eyes and wiggling your nose, does it make it ok? Sure, they may be your eyes and your nose, but your neighbor is the one that paid for the car and it is his.

That is the same story for Pandora. They have to pay royalties for this music, and they are getting screwed over in what they have to pay considering what they are. But YOU not paying them does not mean that THEY dont pay. You listening means that Pandora has to pay that royalty no matter what. If too many leechers delude themselves into thinking theft is ok, they will have to figure out another way to pay their costs… most likely with increased advertising.

So I hope that people who like Pandora enough to listen to it over 40 hours a month will continue to allow them to work and respect them enough to pay that 99 cents. And if you refuse, instead of doing work arounds, steal music from else where instead of from Pandora.

Comment from Toris
Time: December 27, 2009, 2:57 am

Ahhh… I have windows vista. And I did everything successfully til I got to the cookies part.. It says access denied. What do I do?!

Comment from forumsevdam
Time: January 11, 2010, 3:29 am

how dare you steal an entire 99 cents from me oh my god. this is an outrage what kind of sick bastard would steal 99 cents. holy fuck

Comment from blah
Time: January 22, 2010, 4:40 pm

right click the flash app on the main page. click settings. set storage to zero. go back to pandora. everthing is reset. set the storage to 10k.

Comment from Nest
Time: January 27, 2010, 4:50 am

Worth trying.

Comment from ryandatx
Time: February 11, 2010, 10:01 am

props for posting.

Pingback from Pandora 40 Hour Listening Limit – Held IT
Time: February 21, 2010, 3:30 pm

[...] my stations as well as one in which I don’t have to pay.  In my research I have come across ways around the 40 hour limit that involve clearing cookies, but based on reviews it seems that these methods are not always that promising.  My method may [...]

Comment from CE
Time: February 22, 2010, 6:52 am

Pandora will give you a message that you are close to your listening limit…36 / 38 hours…I believe once you hit the 40 hours on a specific username it locks your IP Address / System Address. I have created multiple email address accounts with the same stations and just switch to another account once I receive the “listening limit” message and so far have had no issues. Definitely not pirating….

Comment from Noob Computer User
Time: February 23, 2010, 11:38 am

You guys are dumb. This is not piracy. This is simply working around your personal internet cache. If it was piracy, we’d be stealing the music. We are not stealing the music. Stealing is piracy. Get it? Got it? Good!

Good job to the person who wrote this article.

Comment from GeekAtWork
Time: February 25, 2010, 11:19 am

This does not work if you have a profile setup. Only if your a anonymous user which sucks if you already have all your stations setup..

Comment from iphonetoMac
Time: March 1, 2010, 7:05 pm

I have done it. It works for my computer. I appreciate your article.