2016-08-07 12:17:47

Many of you might know Pandora, a service where you can get personalized radio stations. I found this service about a few months ago and I love it.
When I first tried this service I noticed that the website is not accessible. I was a bit angry because i thought that I couldn't use Pandora.
Then I installed the app and, horray! Teh app works well with voiceover although there are some accessibility issues. Then I became aware of a program called "Hope". This makes Pandora competely accessible to blind people.
I found out that "hope" cost money, which, unfortunately, I don't have... so i couldn't purchase the program...
As I looked for an accessible alternative, I found this neat thing called "Pianobar". It is a command-line client and works well with jaws.
That was my little explanation on how a blind person could use pandora.
Pandora itself is a huge service that gives you the ability to create personalized radio stations.
For example:
You create a station where Breaking Benjamin is your main artist. When you play this station, you will hear your selected artist and similar artists. You can influence what's being played by giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down to a long you like or dislike.
What I mostly listen to is my "thumbprint". This station takes all thumb-ups and thumb-downs of all your stations and generates your own musical taste.
Pandora can also create stations based on a song or genre.
I now have over 50 stations. BTW, you can have up to 100 stations.
I'm currently using the free ersion of pandora where you get ads and you can only skip 6 times per hour. The full version "Pandora One" lets you skip unlimited times and it removes ads.
If you have any questions regarding pandora or the programs I mensioned you can post in this thread.

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2016-08-07 20:08:11 (edited by turtlepower17 2016-08-07 20:09:13)

Yeah, Hope is a great program. I use it myself, although these days I listen to pandora more on my IPhone.

I never heard of that command line utility you're talking about, but it sounds cool. I might give it a try, just to see how it works.

The ads can be annoying, but it's something you get used to after awhile. And it sure beats the hell out of listening to just about any standard FM radio station these days. They all seem to play more commercials than songs, not to mention the constraints of programming, which stopped my interest in becoming a deejay many years ago.


2016-08-10 22:15:16

I personally just started using pandora a couple weeks ago, finding the iOS version to be quite accessible, which is impressive given the rather nasty things I heard about the accessibility of the pandora website itself.

"battle axe! battle axe! battle axe! battle axe! battle axe! battle axe! "
-id software, 1995

2016-08-11 00:20:29

like I said,
if u want to listen to pandora on your pc, you could use either hope, which is paid, or u could use pianobar.
the problem with pianobar is that you have to download the so called "binaries" to get it to work.
once you got the software, just run it, then you're good to go.
just log in and select a station by typing the number.
press +(plus) to thumb up or -(minus) to thumb down a track.
C creates a station, n skips a track, v creates a station based on the currently playing artist or song.

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2016-08-11 20:50:09

Sounds neat. Are the binaries you need downloadable on the website where this program can be found, or do you have to hunt all over the internet to get them?


2016-08-11 22:03:19

here is the direct link for pianobar:
https://github.com/thedmd/pianobar-wind … master.zip
extract the zip and open pianobar.config
when u see user type your mail after the =. type your password after password=. this way the client will log u in automatically so you don't need to enter your credentials every time you open the program.

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2016-08-12 02:25:15

Cool, thanks for that.


2017-08-08 16:14:34

Oh? if it's off-topic about Pandora app I could recommend you article about Pandora-like app development  and it's main features - https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/how-to-m … estimation
Hope you will like it!

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2017-08-09 05:30:01

I'm happily using Pianobar now. I do still have Hope installed, but I haven't touched it in months. Between Pianobar and the IOS app, I don't really need it. I actually tried the Pandora app from the Windows 10 app store recently. I was not impressed. It had barebones accessibility, which, sadly, is actually still praiseworthy since many apps lack even a modicum of usability, but I could find no way to skip to the next track, adjust the volume, or stop playback, short of closing the app. So I couldn't really recommend it.

I saw an article on Lifehacker earlier urging everyone to stop using desktop apps. I highly doubt that the person who wrote it had any idea what he was saying, in terms of how laughable that looked to anyone who uses a screen reader. Seeing this topic being brought up again made me think about it, however. If that kind of attitude gets spread around before any of the Windows screen readers have a fighting chance to catch up with modern app structures, or developers don't actually try to implement the necessary changes in order to make their apps a pleasure to use, we could be in trouble. Not because desktop apps, or older versions of Windows are going away, but because attitudes like that might cause less experienced users to jump ship before it's wise to do so, leading to frustration and a lot of misinformation about what is and isn't accessible.


2017-08-11 19:41:53

Does anyone know of a good proxy to use for Pandora? I live in Canada where Pandora is not available.


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2017-08-12 11:46:25

@10: you an usa a vpn for pandora. I haven't found a good proxy either. I use openvpn with vpnbook.com. you can download the us servers and then copy them into the config folder i think. then you just have to connect to the serverand enter the credentials on the vpnbook website.

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