Interesting. As gilesc points out, this is only possible by reverse-engineering (i.e. decompiling) the Flash client to get the encryption and decryption keys (crypt_key_input.h and crypt_key_output.h [1]). It's actually pretty easy to do this--I did the same thing a few years ago as a weekend project. So why didn't I release it? Well, IANAL, but I think there are potential legal repercussions to this kind of reverse-engineering.

And, as gilesc also points out, Pandora regularly changes their encryption keys, which makes maintaining this kind of software kind of obnoxious. (The solution to that problem, I think, is to make the software download and parse the .swf file on startup or just on failure to yank out those fresh encryption keys itself, but I never tried it.)

I just cringe a bit when I see these sorts of apps, not because I think they shouldn't exist (seriously, Pandora, just release a goddamn API), but because I'm just picturing the lawsuit hammer coming down on the well-intentioned developers who are just Pandora fans.

Regardless, I applaud PromyLOPh's work and am keeping my fingers crossed for his continued lack of legal fees.

[1]: https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/tree/master/src/libpia...

If you're running Linux and/or Gnome, I have two projects to plug:

Pithos is a Gtk client that uses the core libraries from Pianobar to provide a very nice GUI client for Pandora that fully integrates with the latest Gnome/Ubuntu desktop. http://kevinmehall.net/p/pithos/

The second is a set of scripts that I wrote that build on top of the Pianobar client itself to implement media keys and notify-osd support for Ubuntu, although it is incomplete because I myself have switched to using Pithos instead. https://github.com/jreese/pianobar-python

Should probably have linked directly to the github repo https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar

I use it as well, and have been meaning to dig into the code to setup automatic login and playing. I think the stream that it accesses is completely advertising-free too. But I would gladly listen to the pandora ads on it since it runs with SO MUCH LESS memory and CPU than any other player.

If you have homebrew installed, just simply "brew install pianobar".

I like and use it, but it's based on reverse-engineering Pandora's encryption keys, so every once in awhile (when Pandora changes the keys), it breaks the client, which is annoying.

I've used the pianobar client for a long time. (I'm on Linux and there's no official native client.) It breaks every so often and you have to wait a day or so for it to get fixed. A 'feature' of this unofficial client is that it doesn't play any of the ads on free Pandora accounts. So Pandora probably isn't very happy with that.

I love pianobar- I use it daily and love the fact that it uses very little emory especially compared to the Flash-based official clients.

I'm not sure what the official Pandora position regarding pianobar is, but I did hear from an employee that they have worked to disable it in the past.

In a similar vein, shell-fm[1] is a command line client for last.fm streaming. Supports remote control, too (IIRC it uses a socket whereas pianobar uses a named pipe).

[1]: http://nex.scrapping.cc/shell-fm/

its worth mentioning that mac homebrew already has a formula for installing this, and it builds and runs without a hitch.

Damn, I love this site! It's even in FreeBSD's ports -- how awesome is that? Kudos to the developer!

Love pianobar! Use it daily.