By now I would assume that most of you have heard about, if not use, Pandora. But just to be safe, Pandora is an Internet radio station that exploded in popularity in the blink of an eye. They help provide a service that allows you to essentially build your own music playlists given certain criteria such as an era of music, and artist, a genre, and other relevant factors. For example, if you searched for “The Beach Boys” in Pandora, not only would you find tons of Beach Boys albums, but you would also find related music from that time period. The backend software actually uses a complex algorithm that links related songs based on user interactions and hundreds of other factors that all work towards one goal: to make your favorite music bubble to the surface effortlessly. But you can do a lot more than build your custom radio playlists – you even have the opportunity to listen to other stations that other users have created. Odds are that there is already a radio station created by another user with your name on it.
But there are a few caveats regarding who can use this service and how you can use this service. First of all, you need to be in a country that has the legal right to access Pandora. If you aren’t from an authorized country, you will be blocked from using their service unless you have a VPN tunnel to spoof your IP address. The only countries that are allowed to access this service are the US, New Zealand, and Australia – so when selecting a VPN service make sure that your provider has servers in those locations (don’t worry, all of our top VPN picks have servers in these regions).
In addition, you should know that you can use their service absolutely free of charge. But if you upgrade and pay $3.99 per month (a measly $36 USD annually), they will remove the advertising from their site and add extra features such as improving the quality of audio and the ability to add custom skins to the desktop application. But regardless of whether or not you use the free or paid versions, the legal components of their service create some stipulations.
For example, you are not able to rewind your music or listen to same track on repeat. You also cannot skip more than 6 tracks per day, so use them wisely! Note that if you dislike a song and either click on the thumbs down button or you tell Pandora not to play a song for the rest of the month, these actions will count towards the 6 skips you get per day. And lastly, in the past they had to limit the amount of time a user could use their service each month to 40 hours, but that limitation has been removed.
Unblock Pandora on Mobile
Another thing you may want to consider is unblocking Pandora on your mobile device. That way you will have access to all of your favorite tunes without the need to store them in your mobile device’s memory because you will be streaming them from the Internet. You will likely want to use this service on your desktop devices as well as mobile devices, so finding a VPN service that allows multiple devices to connect simultaneously would be a huge benefit. And the range of mobile devices that are supported covers all the major bases. Pandora is supported on Blackberry, iOS, Nook, Kindle Fire and Android devices.
There is just one small problem. You won’t be able to download the Pandora app to your mobile device if it wasn’t registered in the US, New Zealand, or Australia by default. But the good news is that with a Google search you can easily find the right APK file and download with a P2P service. For those of you who don’t know, an APK file is an executable Android file that allows you to install software. After you have installed the right app, all you need to do is log into your favorite VPN service to access the wealth of audio that Pandora provides for free.
Best VPNs for Pandora
ExpressVPN – Complete Review
ExpressVPN costs a little bit more than some other services on the market, but they undoubtedly offer one of the highest quality services out there, too. So with this VPN provider, you get what you pay for. Not only do they provide extremely fast VPN connections, but they don’t throttle your connection or impose data limits. For $8.32 per month with a 1 year subscription, they will give you access to over 80 countries which include all of the countries that you need to access Pandora. And as a massive benefit, their service can be used with both iOS and Android if you want to unlock Pandora on your mobile device. Lastly, they even offer a 30-day money back guarantee so you have plenty of time to test out their service.
Private Internet Access – Complete Review
Private Internet Access is a competitive force to be reckoned with within the VPN industry. Not only do they provide a fast and reliable service, but they will allow you to connect up to 5 devices simultaneously with one user account. If that weren’t enough, they are also one of the most inexpensive services on the market and you can get their service as low as $3.33 per month with a 1-year subscription. Lastly, they will provide you with access to over 3,000 servers located in 21 countries with 3 of those countries being the US, New Zealand, and Australia.
IronSocket – Complete Review
IronSocket VPN will provide you access to servers located in 36 countries and cover your bases on connections to nations permitted to connect to Pandora. They also support just about every type of device out there, and they allow up to 3 concurrent VPN connections with a single account. One nice feature that people really like is their 7-day money back guarantee that will give you a chance to test the waters before making a full commitment, too. Lastly, their service is very reasonably priced at only $4.16 per month with a full-year payment plan.
PureVPN – Complete Review
PureVPN will also help you unblock Pandora with connections to the appropriate countries. They support all of the major operating systems, and like IronSocket VPN, they offer a 7-day money back guarantee. They are priced in the mid-range with a monthly cost of $6.49 per month with an annual plan, but they will allow you to connect up to 5 concurrent devices with a single user account. Lastly, they offer a 24/7 customer support service that is on par with competitors in the industry.
TorGuard – Complete Review
TorGuard will also provide you with servers to connect to that are based in the United States to unlock Pandora. They also provide an extremely fast VPN connection, but they can help protect your anonymity by allowing you to make payments with Bitcoin. In addition, they don’t keep logs of user data so you can rest assured that they won’t track your online habits. They are cheaper than other providers when you buy a 1-year subscription, and the monthly rate is as low as $4.99 per month.