Pandora | Technology Blog

Always VPN To Watch HULU And Similar Services

November 10th, 2008

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There is only one possibility to be able to access content that is restricted to select countries on the Internet: Virtual Private Networks. They basically route your traffic through their web servers so that the destination only communicates directly with their servers. If those servers are located in the country you want to access the content from then you normally can do so without difficulties.

Hotspot Shield was the Virtual Private Network that everyone was talking about. Mainly because it offered free access to their network albeit with limited bandwidth usage before they cut you off. Always VPN could be a viable alternative to watch Hulu or listen to Pandora from outside the United States.

The Virtual Private Network is easy to setup and can be downloaded as a client for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X or Linux. Once the software has been installed the Virtual Private Network connection can be started from the Start Menu in Windows.

Global Pandora down

January 20th, 2008

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Global Pandora was a great service while it did last. Users from outside the United States where able to listen to Pandora, the Internet Radio that would create music stations based on artists or songs that you like. The Music Industry made the decision to block access to Pandora for all users from outside the United States although most users reported that they discovered new music that they found interesting and that the majority actually bought music they discovered at Pandora.

You are not the only one who thinks that something is not right here. Still, Global Pandora uploaded an announcement to their website that all US IPs of Global Pandora have been banned by Pandora so that access is currently not possible anymore. They ask users to use Jango, imeem, Spotify, Songza or SHOUTcast in the interim period.

It remains unknown if Global Pandora will make a comeback because new IPs will most likely get banned after a while as well. They are looking for U.S. servers and shells nevertheless to bring the service back to life.

Create your own Internet Radio Streams

January 15th, 2008

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Meemix reminds me a lot of Pandora. It’s a music recommendation service that finds related artists and tracks from information that you enter. Once the first artist was found that you have entered additional artists and tracks are played once the song finishes or you click the next track button.

User can rate songs from -6 (not) to 6 (hot) and change their mood using the mood control. You can select if you want to hear relaxing (1) to party (6) tunes on another slider and if you want to be surprised or not. Files can be downloaded using Orbit Downloader and Grab . They are in mpx format which XMPlay can play without difficulties.

Meemix does have other features like a friends list, ways to find and listen to stations from other members of the website. It is also possible to block songs, buy songs and add other songs from the album to your favorites. Best of all, Meemix is available to everyone and not only US listeners.

Access Pandora without a proxy

January 12th, 2008

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Pandora is a music service only available to users from the United States that is creating radio stations starting with an artist or song the user recommends and adding related artists and songs to that. It was free for everyone some time ago but due to rights issues it was restricted.

The usual method to access Pandora is to use a proxy that is located in the United States so that Pandora believes that you are from there to. A far better solution was posted in the comments of this blog yesterday.

Global Pandora offers the Pandora interface on a independent website that requires no registration. Just enter a song or artist and a radio station will be build and you can listen to it. All without using a proxy, hiding your real IP or registration.

Use Hotspot Shield to access US-only websites like Hulu and Pandora

November 27th, 2007

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Websites like Hulu and Pandora stop non-US-American visitors right at the doorstep telling them that the contents of the website are not available to them at all. Only US-Americans are allowed and able to view the contents, in the case of the mentioned sites movies and Internet radio.

Lob was pointing out in my article on accessing Hulu from outside the United States that there was another possibility to watch Hulu movies even if you would be living (currently or permanently) outside of the United States. His suggestion was to download and install a software called Hotspot Shield which is a free VPN solution located in the United States.

Download and installation worked fine and I did not have to configure anything by myself to get the VPN service up and running. A quick test at Hulustuff (I do not have an invite yet for Hulu, if anyone has one left feel free to pass it on to me, that would be truly nice) revealed that most videos were working while some told me this: “Sorry, this video is currently unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

Tune into Pandora from outside the United States

November 20th, 2007

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Pandora recently announced that classic music is being added to their music database and I decided to take a look at the service and see if it still had this US only restriction in place and if it would be possible to access Pandora from outside the United States. I knew that it should be possible to access Pandora this way as long as the service that I would be using would not spill my IP but display its own which of course had to be from the United States.

I first tried accessing directly which redirected me to a restricted website explaining why I was not allowed to listen to Pandora from my location outside the United States. So, the ban of everyone from outside the United States is still in place at Pandora.

My second try was with the excellent Secure Tunnel solution which I use for some time now that allowed me to watch Hulu and download from NBC Direct as well. I activated Secure Tunnel in Opera and Pandora would load and play fine as if I was a user from the United States.