Nate Woods

Nate Woods

Hacking Pandora and a better internet

2012-12-01

Ads and that stupid ‘Are you still listening’ button are constant annoyances while trying to enjoy the wonderful custom playlists. Both of which are removable, just don’t talk to loud or they will figure something out to make this difficult (note the absence of links to Pandora from this article). Note: these instructions are meant for Google Chrome, clearly a superior browser, but that’s another story.

Pandora Internet Radio Pandora Internet Radio

Removing Ads

This process works for all advertisements including YouTube’s not just Pandora’s, which, if I am not mistaken, makes browsing the web a better experience. This task is simply accomplished by installing an ad-blocker plugin for Chrome. My ad-blocker of choice is Simple Adblock which was developed by wips.com. Simply add the extension to Chrome and reload the browser. This single plugin has successfully improved my browsing experience by a bazillion, no big deal.

Note: Occasionally, when an audio ad is blocked, Pandora likes to play silence for the duration of the would-be ad. Still better than an annoying voice trying to sell you something in my book.

I AM STILL LISTENING!

This one requires a little more technological knowledge but hopefully I can walk you through, nice and slow so we can all enjoy beautiful uninterrupted music. This process involves a process called JavaScript injection, but don’t be afraid of the name, Chrome Developer Tools greatly simplifies this implementation.

var panFix = setInterval(function(){
    var obj = $('.still_listening');
    if (obj.length > 0) obj.click();
}, 10000);

Explanation: After some looking, I found that one, jQuery is loaded and two the still listening link has a unique class applied to it. Using this, every 10 seconds, I simply check to see if the link is there and if it is, click it.

clearInterval(panFix);

Explanation: This code clears the setInterval looping function set above.

Closing Notes

This is not recommended as these precautions are put in place to allow Pandora to be a profitable company and sustain cheap deals with the artists along with reducing needless server load.

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