from the edge of the deep green sea

***Disclaimer***

It is not the intent of this blog to become the center for illegal information. Pandora is an amazing service and you should delete all files that you download using this tutorial. Why post it? I found nothing out there that explains how to do this on OS X and there are many of us who enjoy listening to new music when it is impossible to have an Internet connection (especially traveling). I was also growing tired of running Windows in Parallels to accomplish such a simple task.

Please not that I did not invent any of these instructions, this is a compiled set that was created by gathering info here and there from the hak5 forums, especially this one.

This tutorial assumes you already have an account with Pandora and you use Firefox to listen to your Pandora tunes.

Technorati Tags: Music

Step 1: Get the JAR

The first thing you need to do is to get the Pandora rip Jar. You can get the final version from this web page. Download the latest Pandora hack and place it anywhere on your HD (after unzipping). I placed it on my home folder for simplicity’s sake.

Step 2: Find the Name of your SWF

The name of the SWF you listen to in Pandora changes name every now and then, so chances are that your default settings differ from the ones used by Pandora. How do you find which is the name of the SWF to use? Simple! Open Safari and go to Pandora.com, once the page loads go to Windows –> Activity. Look for the swf file and you will find its name (click on image for larger picture).

Step 3: Modify pandoraGrabber.html

Inside your Pandora folder, you will find an html file called pandoraGrabber.html. Open it with TextEdit and do a search for SWF. There should be two instances in which you need to change the old name, to the name of the SWF you found in Step 2. Modify the document, save your changes and close it.

Step 4: Lauch the JAR

Open a command window, navigate to where you placed your pandora folder and type the following commands:

export TEMP=`echo ~`/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems
java -jar pandora.jar 8085&

This will open the client.Client JAR application, a window similar to one below will show up:

Take a look at your terminal window, the following messages should be displayed:

admins-computer:~/pandoras sabor$ java -jar pandora.jar 8085
INFO [main] (Client.java:32) – initing app
INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:39) – running
INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:34) – Welcome to Pandoras Jar

INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:34) – Attempting to lauch on port 8085…
INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:34) – OK!

INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:34) – [ready, lets grab some MP3's!!!]

Step 5: Launch Firefox

Open Firefox and open the following URL: http://localhost:8085. You should get a Firefox window that has some panes and the Pandora music tuner. If you cannot see the tuner, some double check steps 2 & 3 above. After 15 seconds or so, your mp3s will be ripped to your mp3 directory.

This is my output when things went well:

INFO [Thread-2] (ProcessAction.java:24) – handling mp3 request
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:24) – locating mp3
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:57) – 4824384187247579094|4824384187247579094
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:153) – copying file[/Users/sabor/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/plugtmp/4824384187247579094] to temp[/Users/sabor/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/plugtmp/temp]
WARN [Thread-2] (ProcessAction.java:65) – unable to save img – albumImgLoc: null songInfo: SongInfo{album=’null’, artist=’Capitol K’, title=’Anon’, trackNumber=’null’, year=’null’, lable=’null’, genre=’null’}
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:167) – adding ID3 tags: SongInfo{album=’null’, artist=’Capitol K’, title=’Anon’, trackNumber=’null’, year=’null’, lable=’null’, genre=’null’}
INFO [Thread-2] (Util.java:131) – album = null
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:153) – copying file[/Users/sabor/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/plugtmp/temp] to temp[/Users/sabor/pandoras/mp3/Capitol K/Capitol K-Anon.mp3]
INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:223) -
ripped file to: /Users/sabor/pandoras/mp3/Capitol K/Capitol K-Anon.mp3
yea baby!!!

Troubleshooting

Although this procedure works, it is far from flawless as there are various issues that will present themselves at random intervals and I am unaware on how to find them. To name a few:

INFO [Thread-2] (Server.java:34) – unable to rip MP3 null

Dunno what causes this or why it happens, shutting down the Pandora Hack application, re-opening and refreshing Firefox usually takes care of this problem. Also advancing to the next song also works.
Update: Check this page to find out how to get rid of this error, it worked for me!

INFO [Thread-2] (Mp3Processor.java:39) – access file not found trying again after 1 sec

This is an error in which the java application is not finding the cache location of the Pandora mp3s. Give it some time and the error should stop showing. If all else fails, delete the numeric files in ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/plugtmp