How to get around Pandora’s 40 hour music limit
How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks - August 30th, 2009 - 65 Comments
I love Pandora and use it all the time, so I was pretty frustrated when I discovered that I had hit the 40 hour limit and was being asked to pay for the service. Well, like any good Mac geek I poked around and figured out a way to reset the 40 hour limit (Windows users scroll below for how-to), and here’s how I did it:
Reset / Remove Pandoras 40 hour limit
* In your Home directory, open Library > Preferences > Macromedia > Flash Player > #SharedObjects
* You’ll find a bunch of directories in here with various randomly generated names like JZK819C3P and H8R1ZK19M, etc – these are basically cookies for Flash Player and if you don’t mind losing other settings elsewhere, you can delete all these folders to reset your Pandora music limit, but if you’d rather preserve other settings and just reset Pandora, read on…
* In the Finder window Search Box, type “pandora” and then select the folder “Macromedia” as your search directory rather than ‘This Mac’
* Delete just these files/folders, they’re usually labeled pandora, pandora.com, and #pandora.com
* Ta da! Your Pandora limit is now reset and you have another 40 hours to listen! Alternatively, you could just pay the $1/month to use Pandora, it’s such a great app it’s worth it.
Reset / Remove the Pandora 40 hour limit in Windows
Many of us have Windows PC’s as well, so we might as well cover the bases for the Windows XP/Vista/7 users too:
* Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects
Replace “USERNAME” with your user name
* Same as above, there will be a bunch of random folder names, you can delete them all, or just the ones containing ‘pandora’ in the name
* Now navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys
* Find the folder named ‘#pandora.com’ and delete it, or just delete all the files
* Finally, navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Cookies and delete everything labeled ‘pandora’
Following all these directions, and you’ll be listening to Pandora free of the forty hour limitation again! Enjoy!
iPhone / iPod Touch users: the iPhone and iPod Touch version of Pandora seems to be immune to the 40 hour music limit (for now at least).
…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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“you’re just a nosey neighbor who has nothing better to do than prop the system up and be a tool.”
-That is the best shit I’ve heard all week! Amen
And Terrence Brown, “That “system” keeps you alive stupid.” Your a fluffing idiot
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.
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
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
Struggling to make it? They “struggled” & made $125m last year. LMAO!!
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!!!
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.
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
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!
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/
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.
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.
[...] one of your email addresses. This way you can listen to the same station(s) you usually do.Then, as OSXDaily.com writes, on [...]
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
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?
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.
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.
@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
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.
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.
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?!
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
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.
Worth trying.
props for posting.
[...] 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 [...]
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….
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.
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..
I have done it. It works for my computer. I appreciate your article.
haha Pandora is the coolest thing to happen to the internet since youporn.com. And i save more money switching to Progressive thanks to Pandora. Kudos to the guys working the G-nome project. Keep up the good work guys!
ur all fags
You’re all bitch a$$ nig guhs
Thanks for the article, never mind all the negative vibes from everyone else..
lol its super funny, because you all assume that the people offering these solutions are actually people that exploit these methods. 1) you only know that they know how to do it, not that they do. because they could be bored, etc. 2) why are you pointing fingers at someone. i’m pretty sure all of you do illegal stuff too, such as topping off for gas, etc. so please stow it.
oh wait i assumed on the second point, lol oh well. ahah
tried this on osx and it didnt work…. probably a dumb question, but do i need to change my pandora acct name, too?
Seriously, who the fuck cares, to me, this is NOT steeling. Fuck i had Pandora BEFORE thay started Charging you for there *work* and then all of a sudden i get slapped in the face with, pay to continue to listen bull shit. its not fair to me. i had been listening and supporting Pandora since the birth of it and i didnt get anything now did i? so, now i get around it. i LOVE this. it was Very helpful. ^_^ thanx!
Really? You “supported” Pandora before they started charging? How so? Did you send them checks? When making an online purchase, did you tell the vendor “Oh, by the way, it was your ad on Pandora that led to this purchase”?
You feel like you’ve been “slapped in the face”? Yeah, reality will do that to you.
The fact is, Pandora now has to pay for each and every play of each song for each listener. They fought to use a more reasonable royalty payment scheme (similar to how am/fm radio stations pay), but this is the best they could get. There was a very good chance that Pandora wasn’t going to be able to stream ANY free music.
Pandora now incurs a substantial cost in order to provide this product, and yet, they’re still giving it to us for free – just not in unlimited quantities anymore. If you don’t want to pay, go try last.fm or some other streaming site for a while.
Just because the method of controlling how much music you get from Pandora resides on your computer doesn’t mean that it’s not stealing. When you use a piece of software or a service, you agree to any Terms of Use (whether you bother to read them or not). Your options are to agree, or not use the software or service.
So you can decide for yourself whether or not to bypass the 40-hour limit, but if you do so, just admit it – you are stealing service. Man up.
you’re not really stealing service considering they put voice ads in pandora now
i think this is a great site and the gnome project rocks!! everyone one loves this streaming site… it is just amazing and you dont have to worry about carrying your music collections or buying new ones anymore…. they got it all.. so please, if you like it, please pay for it.. i wouldnt pay for other softwares as well but this is just a great accomplishment, so i would if it played in my country..
as much as i listen, they’re losing more than $.99 by cutting me off before the month is half over. that’s 20 days worth of ads they can’t play at me. silly pandora. i won’t start paying for their service until their “genome” is more effective. there are hundreds of attributes to songs they totally ignore and often attributes which are given to songs are inaccurate. even if they fix that, they are still making lots of money from advertisers, they don’t need my dollar, and i feel no need to give it to them.
Dude, why were there so many people dissing this guy who is just completely smart? It’s 99 cents, okay he wants to steal it, so do other people, it pops up on GOOGLE once you start searching ‘getting around pand-’! Wtf is wrong with you, obviously other people want to do it too, Jesus.
And I for one want to do what he showed all of us to do. So people who are against this stop being such a hypocrite and just let all of us live our lives.
I personally think that if pandora wants to limit it’s free listeners to 40 hrs a month, they are basiccly inviting computer savvy people to find ways around that. It’s 2010, people, and if someone wants something for free that’s online, they are going to find a way to do it. I think there should be more people like the poster of this information. Corperations must understand that if you try to put limits on things like pandora, people will find a way to get around that limit. Get over it. Screw limitations on a “free” service. We need more tech heads to figure out ways around stupid limitations.
Wow, I just posted something about “Awesome that someone figured out how to get past the 40 hr limit”, then I read some of the other posts about people being pissed about people getting past the 40 hr limit, and not wanting to pay the 99 cents. Do you people really have nothing better to do than to worry about other people’s cookies on their computers? If you really care that much, why don’t you try and write a program for pandora that makes it so people can’t do that, or post a message board about how to pay more for pandora. You’re just mad because you didn’t think of it first. PROPS TO WHOEVER POSTED THIS! What was the saying? “Keep on rockin’ in the “free” world?” Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Photoshoped.
I can tell from some if the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time.
For fack sake people, get your head out of your butt. If this is “stealing” then every time you go over the legal speed limit GOD kills a kitten. What he is doing is just using his knowledge and resources to get around a problem.
I bet everyone has gone over the speed limit sometime in there life. That IS breaking the law and IS illegal, but did you get a ticket EVERY time? No, because the law enforcement is not going to waste their time on something that equals the same as going over the speed limit by 1MPH… on the freeway.
have a good day young chaps, and my the Force be with you.
Paying Pandora to pay the RIAA and big license-monsters is really the core issue, as it never seemed like Tim Westergren was a money-grubbing foo looking to net massive profits. This puts one in a dilemma over this cool 99 cents: do you help Pandora so that they can pay the RIAA and co. with your money, or do you say Fuck ‘em all! and make your dollar-bill stand against the system? You stopped buying CDs because of the stupid CEOs who didn’t want to let go of 80’s and early 90’s profit margins, why should you now support this new intrusion into art-for-fuck’s-sake?
Sure, maybe the 99 cents isn’t a second mortgage, but I’m one of 35 million-plus making the decision to throw a dollar at the situation.
Personally, I pay the shit, just because I’m rather resigned to the nature of the business beast. But in my head, I’m totally not paying that stupid dollar, and I’m doin’ it like a badass, with good reasons, and all that. I’ve even got a leather jacket, maybe. I do approve of circumventing the charge, so long as one realizes that, by keeping millions of pennies from flowing into mega-huge record companies’ coffers, one is symbolically trashing Pandora in the process. That’s the system and this sure as fuck ain’t the way out of it, with or without a Christian ethic that prohibits anything looking like theft.
Now, murder… I guess at least we have something to agree on, all of you. That’s pretty wrong.
I dont know why everyone says it doesn’t. You should put up Windows 7 Instructions – the file directory is just different. This works, I appreciate the article. Props.
It would be one thing if I thought my 99 cents was going into the pocket of some new band just on the rise, who really needed it. Forking over my personal information to make sure those guys at the RIAA can afford to drive a Corvette and laugh at me? I think I’ll pass. A pretty simple fix if you think about it, thanks for the share.
One day, we’ll all be behind our very own internet censorship and monitoring, either on a national or, heaven forbid, a global level. Better get your free music while you can, boys and girls, because the internet is a rapidly changing place, and if you think the corporations are going to let you shave from their bottom line forever, you’re sorely mistaken.
For those that haven’t heard of it, I urge you all to make yourselves aware of the ACTA, that is, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a multinational initiative that makes the DMCA wet it’s pants at night.
http://www.laquadrature.net/files/201001_acta.pdf
The full latest leaked documents from this highly secret proposal can be found at the link provided. Knowledge is power, my friends.
thanks for publishing this bug so that it can be fixed in the next release!
1) it’s pandora’s fault to allow for an easy work around. how hard would it be to throw in some simple javascript and a database of IPs?
2) the client can (and should be expected to) do anything they wish with their own computer, hard-drive, and files. deleting files is not and never will be illegal.
3) others sites like jango are free for indefinite use. pandora can’t expect to make money this way with such competition anyway.
Wow, Mac users are just a bunch of whiny tarts.
If Pandora REALLY was concerned with limiting people to the 40 hour period, they’d use IP tracking instead of cookie loading.
They don’t care about the $1, they just needed to do something to keep the music industry tards happy.
In a month of use, Pandora makes FAR MORE than one single Washington off of you. Why would they want to completely cut out their primary source of revenue.
They needed to make it at least slightly difficult as opposed to having a button like “Ignore 40 Hour Limit” so again, music industry tards can’t complain.
As for piracy, you’re deleting files off of your PERSONAL COMPUTER and there isn’t an agreement in the world that can prevent you from legally doing that. So, little Mac tarts, if Pandora really gave a damn, there are far better ways they could have secured their farking dollar.
AGREEDED!!
Thanks a lot for the help. I’m addicted to this website and I always miss it when I reach the limit.
Wouldn’t it be better just to make a run bat file that runs when you turn off the computer to delete the file in question, this way you never have to repeat the same step.
2nd thing you can do is even better
Ready, If you have firefox just get “NoScripts”, download, install, and when your on Pandora allow only Pandora.com, it should be the first one on the list.
3th thing an easy one when changing stations hit reload on your browser and with noscrips it will reload by passing all the stops and start the music asap..
@brian and @slipline
They couldn’t easily track IPs, since most home users have dynamic IPs and most work users are behind several layers of routers, so that they would all share the limit. Not to mention even if they did try to track IPs, you can still proxy or VPN out.
Their best bet would probably be to track MAC addresses, but you can spoof those.
So really, this system was probably the best combination of effectiveness/least effort.
Pandora is not free. I have to listen to their stupid ads all day. Sometimes I’ll even click on their banner ads to be a good consumer. If they’re not generating enough revenue from that, then their business model is flawed. not my problem. this is bait-and-switch.
You’re all pillaging Vandals and Visigoths
Thanks for this information, proved useful. Think about this, Im sure Pandora doesn’t really care that much, because before i found this fix i just simply started listening to last.fm….so therefore they lost a consumer listening to their ads. Now if their deal is with the record companies on giving you 40hrs free listening a month, then dont ya think they make it this easy to remove the 40hr limit on purpose. Almost like they have to follow the rules but if you break them its on you. Much like the FTA recievers. These companies dont make usb upgradable satellite recievers for you to get the gospel channel on FTA, they make them so you can reprogram them to get the channels you really want. But since this is done by the consumer they aren’t at fault.
So same with pandora, im sure they could make it more difficult to limit your listening (block your account or IP address) but they dont because sure you aren’t paying that 99 cents…..but you ARE listening to their advertisements!
Thank again!
Tried this twice – three times… Did NOT work for me. Any other workarounds?
Thanks,
K.J.L.H.