Most surfers online will probably have heard of Pandora. It’s a fantastic internet radio station with a big difference, you control the playlist. For anyone who loves music this is a fantastic service. It’s been developed around Music Genome project, if you’re in the US just go and see.
For the rest of use accessing Pandora is not that simple, unfortunately dues to music licensing or stuff like that – you’ll get blocked anywhere outside the USA. This has been the case for years, you used to have to verify this by inputting your ZIP code – if it was in America you were allowed in. Obviously this wasn’t hard to do, pick a US Zip code and you were in, I used a random one from a hotel.
Unfortunately they now check your IP address to see if it’s in the US. When you try to access the site, the Pandora server looks up the location of your IP address if it’s non-US you get a little sorry message. Makes me sad that this is happening more and more on the net.
But all you have to do is mask your real IP address and use one from the US and you’re in. You’ll have to use a US proxy and if you search online you’ll find lots of guides on these. This blocks the site from checking your real location and allows you into Pandora. You have to do this every time you access which is why using a free proxy can be annoying as it sometimes takes hours to find a good one working.
There are tools to help you find them though, have a look at foxy proxy for firefox, or if you just want instant access try one of the commercial programs which are relatively inexpensive. Make sure you don’t get blocked from one of the best sites on the net, it’s not that hard to beat Pandora in Canada or Europe using a proxy.
I know these companies have licensing agreements to honour but it the internet is being increasingly blocked, filtered and censored depending on where you are. It’s not something that I’m too keen on to be honest. Better blocked from Pandora without using a workaround is nothing like the poor Chinese who are rapidly heading for a tiny State controlled Intranet.
