Pithos

Does Pithos respect the 40 hr/month limits set by Pandora?

Asked by David Velazquez

I've been reintroduced to Pandora by this app after many years of not using it. Upon reading a bit on the Pandora site I found that for users who choose not to purchase Pandora One they limit the amount of music one can stream to 40 hrs/month, how many times one can choose to skip a song (amongst other things as well I bet), and provide lower quality audio to stream. I was wondering if Pithos respects this limit or gets around it. Similarly, if it does respect these limitations, if I were to purchase Pandora One would Pithos be able to take advantage of the no-limit streaming, unlimited ability to skip, and better quality audio streams?

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Kevin Mehall (kevin-mehall) said : 		#1

The 40 hour limit and skip limit* are enforced client-side in the official Flash version. Pithos does not duplicate these "anti-features" because since it is open-source, this code could easily be removed. The non-crippled fork would then gain support.

*If you go really crazy with the skip button, Pandora temporarily bans your IP address.

Pithos currently does not take advantage of the higher-quality audio streams on Pandora One, though it is known to work with Pandora One accounts. I believe pianobar (Pithos uses pianobar's libpiano backend to communicate with Pandora) does support this, so it could be potentially added to Pithos.

I do encourage Pithos users to buy Pandora One, however, since Pandora Media, Inc. loses ad revenue since Pithos does not show their ads.

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Omen_20 (omen20) said : 		#2

What are the differences in bit rate between standard accounts and Pandora One? Also does Pandora One support surround sound output? If Pithos supported a higher quality audio from One accounts I'd definitely get one. Already been thinking about it because like you said, I'm not giving them any ad views.

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Kevin Mehall (kevin-mehall) said : 		#3

Standard accounts use AAC, and Pandora One allows a higher-quality MP3. I haven't looked into the bitrates, but I believe it is still 2-channel, not surround. Pithos support for the higher quality stream on Pandora One is not yet implemented, but is on my to-do list.

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freefal67 (freefal67) said : 		#4

There are now two branches in Launchpad that provide high-quality audio.
There is my own that adds a checkbox to the preferences dialog allowing you to choose between "aacplus", which was previously the default in Pithos, and "mp3-hifi", which the high-quality stream you get in the flash client if you have Pandora One.
It appears that user bethebunny has also implemented this with a combobox. He additionally exposes the third valid Pandora XML option, which is "mp3" (not sure how this compares to the "aacplus" option in terms of quality).
Would be great if we could get one or the other incorporated into trunk.

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