Pandora: How to Rip and Save Pandoras Music to MP3 Files for Free

Contributor Icon Contributed by MickeyMouse Date Icon May 25, 2006  
Tag Icon Tagged: Internet  

Pandora is an amazing music service. If you want to actually save the music to your hard drive to keep forever and forever, these steps will allow you to do it easily. Burn straight to mp3 with tags, titles, and sorting intact. Updated!


You need firefox as well.

1. Go to pandora.com and setup an account.
2. Download and run Pandora’s Jar:

New instructional guide here:

http://forums.hak5.org/index.php/topic,983.0.html

3. Click the Extract All Files link to uncompress the files to a directory on your computer. I use c:\pandora
4. Goto the directory that contains your downloaded files (c:\pandora)
5. Double-click on pandora.jar.
6. The file will launch and you will see something like:

Welcome to Pandoras Jar
Attempting to lauch on port 80...OK
[ready, lets grab some MP3'S!!!]

7. Visit http://localhost in firefox
8. Firefox should load with Pandoras Jar version of Pandora
9. As you listen, the mp3s will be created in a directory called mp3 in your original pandoras jar installation directory (c:\pandora\mp3)

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  • Dabackdaboot
    thats kinda bullshit. if the artists don't say the music is free, its stealing. going ot heir web page to listen, or making a station to stream from is support. this is stealing, & its not what real fans do.
  • The intelligent voice.
    Yes, also anyone who ever made a mix tape on a casette from the radio deserves jail time and fines.
    DO you listen to yourself talk?
  • n/a
    Or you could just download audacity and set record to "what you hear" Would probably work as it just captures any sound coming through you sound card.
  • Pamike
    Hello guys, I'm using OSX SL, listening to Pandora radio and recording all I want at 320kb/s (VBR) bitrate Stereo (no Joint Stereo) even applying enhancers like Equalizer, Reverberation, Compressor, Delay, Suboctave bass, etc etc....on the fly. So the final quality of the .mp3 I get is amazing!

    ...try Audio Hijack Pro.

    Greetings
  • BelieveMeOrNot
  • darkroom
    Everything is working fine except when I am trying to Grab a song it says

    unable to locate artist and song information.

    Please I spend like 3 hours trying to find the problem but nothing please help me I am using

    Pandora's Jar Ver: 7.4.0
  • SammyTheSanake
    You got anything for Linux? Fedora 12.
  • SammyTheSanake
    You got anything that works on Linux? fedora 12.
  • workingmusicianandfan
    Simple plea here - please don't use this app. The more people who use this and other similar applications, the faster streaming music services like Pandora and Last.fm will go away.

    I like these services because I can legally listen to music I enjoy, and learn about new artists that are similar to my tastes w/o having to budget a small fortune to do so. I like the try before you buy model.

    While piracy will get you the song(s) you want and satisfy your short term need for a booty shake, a headbang, or whatever your fix is, it leads to concert ticket inflation, less original music, and more starving artists that have to wait longer and longer before their dreams are realized.
  • amirfarivar
    also try AudialsOne, audials.com!
  • PandoraRadio
    Is this Pandora hack still working? Sounds almost too good to be true. Also, not quite clear on what a jar is?
  • dennisreed
    Freecorder 4 allows 192 which is the max speed for Pandora. Works
    good!
  • eniwetok
    I think using FreeCorder is easier. It was one of the few recorders that would work with my AMD/nVida PC. FreeCorder creates individual files at whatever bitrate you want. I oversample at 160kbs even though Pandora seems to be streaming at 128kbs. I make note of all the songs that are playing so I can rename the mp3s... and after each plays, I disapprove it so it won't play in that station again.
  • this is valuable information. I will definitely tell my wife!
  • Nice. still works.
  • Yofunkylady
    You said you could download them on my computer but i'm not clear how? it took me forever to figure out what java RE was cause there are different Re's! RDK, am
    I right? I'm not a novice but I'm not a Pro either. I didn't understand alot of what you described. Like Pandora's Jar. I never seen it anywhere. And all the other stuff was so confusing to me. I downloaded the RDK and I don't know what to do next, so how to download songs on to my computer, I guess I'll never know. It's a shame, Because I have some really righteous stations on there!
  • will_85
    are you kidding me? Pandora is such an awesome service and you are completely undermining it! Pandora could wind up getting shut down because of crap like this...

    PLEASE, PLEASE, just buy your damn music or listen for FREE on Pandora's website!
  • Anonymous
    since Pandora is a music sharing site there is a high chance that the site or the music itself is contaminated with malware

    who knows? Pandora might acutually be the source of the conflicker virus family. there are so many accounts on Pandora that it would be easy to hide and upload malware.

    do you trust that the site (Pandora / music is malware free? cause i sure don't !!!
  • Anonymous
    You have no idea what Pandora is, do you?
  • when i run the jar, my compy just wants to uzip it... any help?
  • John Engelbert
    Hello,

    I have Leopard for Mac and I was wondering how I am supposed to be able to rip the songs off of Pandora onto my hard drive.

    Thanks
  • Tammy
    ONLY USA
  • Z
    um... i think the links r down :(... anybody know if its just my comp?
  • A
    Yeah i have the same problem. i type in http://localhost and am brought to a site named
    "Aphrodite" with a blank page.
  • Jay
    Also.... The Safari trick mentioned in the thread above works on Safari for Windows as of Jan 2009.
    Open Safari's activity window and look for entries starting with "http://audio-sjl-"
    - you have to manually name the track and append ".mp3" to the file name too, but it's easy and it works.
  • Worked like a charm for me! Thanks so much for the guide
  • Well, this is a great idea BUT, this is just killing the artist and the music industry. Do you want the musicians to make more, great music? Then stop STEALING there art and start buying it so you can support them. You may think all musicians are rich bastards, WRONG. It's just enough to pay the bill's unless there signed to a major label and then still it's just enough to make it buy. Also, isn't the point of buying an album so you can go home, sit down and listen to it? Enjoy it? You damn thieves are what's killing the music industry. Everyone now looks at music and mp3's like its just some 4MB file on the computer that doesn't mean shit. I work my ass off creating, composing, mixing, mastering, a song. I making a little over minimum wage working full time and I'm trying to make it as an independent artist. I make about 60 cents a song. That's NOTHING. And then to find out there are people who want to steal my art? NO. That's crap. Go steal some rich Hip Hop or crappy Rock artist's "art" and be done with it, but Pandora is a great place to find NEW, unheard, up-and-coming artists. So, don't steal there shit. Buy it, support them, and hope they create more great music.
  • Name
    Music industry and artists are greedy pieces of sh*t. I support the artists I want to see make it to the big time, but if you make millions and than maybe drop from 10 mil to 5 mil a year? cry me a river you shouldn't be making that much anyway, Our country has horrible debt to everyone and we pay people for sports and music millions and millions of year while a teacher makes maybe 35-45k? Cap their salary take the rest for something real and if you want to b*tch about their hard work, get real, words on a page is not hard work and if they want people to care and buy their crap, $1 a song on itunes and $10-$20 a CD is crap, make it reasonable like say $3-5 a CD on itunes and I'd buy 10x more stuff, sorry I don't work 8 hours a day so I can buy a few shitty cd's that they had someone help write their songs and produce while they collect
  • Anonymous
    The record industries are the real thieves. Bypass them and use Web 2.0 technologies such as peer-to-peer to your advantage to gain a large fan base and you'll make more money on your own.
  • Jay
    Robert,
    I take your point.
    However, after tax I earn about $12 per hour. If I could afford CDs I'd buy 'em.
    3 further points:
    1. I go to gigs (over $300 spent this year) and some of that goes to the artist, and the prices have gone up insanely in the last 24 months.
    2. Pandora has advertising - when I listen on Pandora, the ads pay for the licence fee which they in turn pay pay - so when I rip from Pandora, something goes to the artist, unlike if I just download from a peer-to-peer site.
    3. Anything in Pandora's TOS which prevents recording for PERSONAL use (like we used to tape stuff off the radio in the old days and put in our walkman) is probably illegal - though this hasn't been totally tested in court, similar cases have for AM radio (thus, it is not stealing, it is - legally speaking - fair use). It's not like I'm ripping a crappy 64kbps (or whatever it is) stream and then playing it in a club.
    4. Generally, after a couple of listens in the car, I'm back to Pandora again (and I'd guess my usage pattern is not atypical) so even morally speaking I feel like I'm getting fair use, UNLIKE when I download some albums off peer to peer and then keep them forever instead of buying, which does, indeed, leave the artist with nothing.
    Any thoughts?
  • nice and adequate
  • Honesty Pays
    If Pandora gets shut down because of people like you doing this kind of crap, I'm gonna be real mad. I pay for my music because I respect the things that good music is made from. I pay for my music because I love my music and I wouldn't feel right listening to it if it were stolen. Don't be a jerk. Pay for your music.
  • Adrian
    Get mad. Loser.
  • Interesting, really interesting way to obtain free music
  • gah.
    does it have to be a firefox browser?
  • DC
    I dont think step 7-8 is working, I go to open it up and it opens as a blank page called aphrodite. Is there anything I can do to fix that?
  • Anonymous
    I can only download one then it dosen't work
  • Rider
    unable to locate artist and song information.
    Waiting (last.fm).

    * Waiting (top fans).

    ANY FIXES FOR THIS?
  • clien
    huh
  • lashavia lovett
    my question is how how download music and save it to my harddrive
  • Great site. thank you for the post =)
  • Awesome tip! Thanks MickeyMouse.
  • josi
    I tried to do that and doesn't work: "unable to rip MP3 unable to find file make sure you have Pandora running in a FIRFOX browser"
  • Anonymous
    The Pandora.com website is great, however "Pandora Jar" is one of the buggiest most poorly designed pieces of garbage on the internet.

    To operate and name files properly it attempts to get the artist name/song name from last.fm while music is streaming from pandora.com. It has this terrible bug where it keeps rewriting the same song over and over even though it gives each individual file the proper name... if and when it even gets that far.

    This is a software package that primarily relies on timing holes and is not a solution for ripping mp3s. I've been working with version 8.1.1. If you don't believe me then look at the dates of the postings on this website. It appears that most posts were in 2006. I suspect many just gave up.
  • Anonymous
    just use the tool that the myspace mp3 gopher guy wrote
  • davak
    Coolie. Will try!
  • Anonymous
    Not sure if anyone here is on a Macintosh using Safari. But I've found it very simple to download the mp3 files from Pandora. Just Open your ACTIVITY window and when you hear a song you like you'll see it downloading in the Activity window. When it's done just double click on it and it will download to your desktop. Change the name and add the .mp3 to the end and you're good to go.
  • Anonymous
    Here is a new tool for downloading songs from Pandora.com.

    The installation is simple. Install the .net framework, then start the binary.
    And download songs :)

    http://sudhanshuraheja.com/2007/01/pandora-downloader-installation.html
  • Thanks for this tool, it really helped me
  • Anonymous
    so this program does not work anymore? im having the same firfox error. any help?
  • Anonymous
    Yeap... sometime ago, using firefox was possible to see all the mp3 files created in user temp directory. The only thing that pandora.jar had to do was get the files, rename them and you was ready to listen the musics. But now mp3 files from Pandora website is no longer in user temp directory and pandora.jar returns an error message.
  • Anonymous
    awww man...it says make sure you have it under the firefox browser...and i clearly do have it running on firefox... :(
  • Anonymous
    :lol:
  • Anonymous
    It seems to be a problem with your extract tool. I used the link above, extracted and the files are there. The problem that I face now is that pandora.jar can not find the mp3 files any more. As I said, Pandora.com has moved the temporary mp3 files to another directory (maybe hidden) that pandora.jar can not find.
    :(
  • well I think that this is great tool, although it might not be working at this moment.
  • Anonymous
    It seems to be a problem with your extract tool. I used the link above, extracted and the files are there. The problem that I face now is that pandora.jar can not find the mp3 files any more. As I said, Pandora.com has moved the temporary mp3 files to another directory (maybe hidden) that pandora.jar can not find.
    :(
  • Anonymous
    It seems to be a problem with your extract tool. I used the link above, extracted and the files are there. The problem that I face now is that pandora.jar can not find the mp3 files any more. As I said, Pandora.com has moved the temporary mp3 files to another directory (maybe hidden) that pandora.jar can not find.
    :(
  • Anonymous
    i extracted the file, and the file that comes up has nothing in it...whats the deal?
  • Anonymous
    It seems that Pandora has moved the mp3 from the original temp file and pandora.jar can not find it. The original directory was Documents and Settingsbla...bla...blaTemp and you could find all mp3 there. I already tried to find where is the new directory but had no success until now.
    Any idea?
  • Anonymous
    i'm getting it too

    i want my damn eyes-radio-lies now dammit. i can't afford to buy music
  • Anonymous
    I'm having the same problem where I get "unable to rip MP3 unable to find file make sure you have Pandora running in a FIRFOX browser"

    Is this a common problem? Is there a fix?

    Thanks
  • Anonymous
    Pandora opens and everything but it just wont rip my MP3's.
    All it does is give me

    "unable to rip MP3 unable to find file make sure you have Pandora running in a FIRFOX browser"

    and "localhost connected to server." immediatly afterwards..

    ofc it is running in a firefox browser so i was wondering what the problem could be..
  • Anonymous
    the program works but it is writing the wrong mp3 tags to the music. wrong filename also. The data is correct but applied to the wrong MP3. I presume it is running one song behind. Any ideas how/what to fix?

    -----Paul-----
  • Anonymous
    <ul id="quote">
    mafia996630 wrote:
    any1 else gettin this problem

    "INFO Thread-2 util.Mp3Processor - access file not found trying again after 1 sec"</ul>

    I'm getting that problem. It seems to more or less render the program useless.
  • Anonymous
    <ul id="quote">I wanted to confirm that I am getting the same problem. I suspect it could be the firewall on my router. If someone could tell me what ports need to be open, I could probably figure out how to set my router.

    I do not want to kill my firewall or put my PC into a DMZ.

    Thanks
    </ul>

    port 80 dude, which is already open probz.

    any1 else gettin this problem

    "INFO Thread-2 util.Mp3Processor - access file not found trying again after 1 sec"
  • Anonymous
    I wanted to confirm that I am getting the same problem. I suspect it could be the firewall on my router. If someone could tell me what ports need to be open, I could probably figure out how to set my router.

    I do not want to kill my firewall or put my PC into a DMZ.

    Thanks
  • Anonymous
    I'm getting a problem where the info box that shows the music that's playing and everything not showing up. I was wondering if I was the only one, and if so, how do I fix it.
  • davak
    <ul id="quote">
    Hack_Vista wrote:
    If you are getting the above error, you need to replace your jar with this one:

    http://comicnut.speedxs.nl/pandora.jar

    This will fix the “unable to rip MP3 null” error</ul>

    W00t. Thanks for the update!
  • Hack_Vista
    If you are getting the above error, you need to replace your jar with this one:

    http://comicnut.speedxs.nl/pandora.jar

    This will fix the “unable to rip MP3 null” error
  • MickeyMouse
    Wow. Amazing digg traffic.

    Update from the forums...

    <ul id="quote">Beta 3 is trying to call https://www.pandora.com:443/radio/tuner_6_9_0_3.swf while Pandora.com is calling https://www.pandora.com:443/radio/tuner_6_9_0_4.swf
    To fix this, just update the URL in pandoraGrabber.html"</ul>
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