Remember Pandora, the Internet Radio service that went viral shortly after its release thanks to its interesting music suggestion service and the fact that it was available to users from all over the world? Pandora shortly thereafter went US-only blocking access for users who tried to connect from other countries.
It is still possible to listen to Pandora if you are not in the US, but you need a web proxy or virtual private network for this.
One of the things that I never liked that much was that Pandora was only accessible on the official website. This meant that you had to keep the browser window open all the time if you wanted to listen to music from the service (mobile clients are now available).
Elpis is an Open Source Pandora client for Windows that changes this. It basically moves all important options that the Pandora web player offers to the client. A free or subscription based Pandora account is however required to start playing music with Elpis. New users can create Pandora accounts right from within the program interface.
Once you have linked your account you can start searching for music to play it in the client. Results are then displayed in a list that you can click on to tune into that radio station.
Music is from that moment on played automatically. You can now minimize the Pandora player to just listen to music, or use the player controls to vote for songs or pause and skip songs.
Global Media hotkeys can be enabled in the program interface. That’s useful if you want to minimize the program window, as it allows you to control the player when it is minimized.
Elpis will log in to Pandora automatically when the program is started. You can configure the program to start playing the last played station automatically.
Individual songs can be bookmarked and favorited with a click on the > icon in the program window.
Elpis is an easy to use yet feature rich Pandora client for Windows. The program and its source code are both available at Adam Haile’s website. Elpis requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0 to be installed on the system. It is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: Open Source, pandora, windows software
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