Save Pandora.com MP3s with 3tunes

Martin Brinkmann
May 15, 2006
Updated • May 5, 2013
Music and Video
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15

A visitor of my site recommended a Pandora music downloader+ application in a comment and I decided to give it a try and see how well it works. 3tunes is relatively stable considering the fact that it is still in alpha development stage. All you need is to download the file which is only about 20k in size and head to the Pandora website. Once the first song starts playing you double click the 3tunes executable and it automatically shows the song which is currently being played on the website.

It saves the songs to c:/, I suggest you visit this from time to time to move and copy the songs that you have been listening to and like. I found no way to change the download location and there is actually no configuration file at all. This will be added in a future release probably. Make sure you register with Pandora so that you can listen to an unlimited amount of songs as the guest account is only good for a few songs after which you are asked to register to keep using the service. Registration is free on the other hand and should not keep anyone from using the Internet Radio service.

Update: 3Tunes is no longer available. A viable alternative to rip the Pandora stream is Stationripper which I have reviewed here on Ghacks as well. Stationripper is a free software for Windows to download and save Internet radio streams. It supports a wide variety of streaming services, including Pandora. Only the commercial version of the software can download Pandora streams though. An alternative is Audials One, also commercial but well suited for the task.

You can alternatively look at my new guide on how to download Pandora Radio to your computer. It uses a free Windows software to achieve that so take a look if you prefer to use free programs to save music that is played by Pandora to your computer.

Keep in mind that you can only download Pandora songs if you can access the site. Since it is now restricted to users from the US, you may need to use a proxy or VPN to do so.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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