I’ve been enjoying Pandora for a long time and have been making lists of music to download from elsewhere. But all that searching through numerous sites and finding the right one just doesn’t equate to the time lost. So I’ve found two plugins that help music to be downloaded from Pandora. It may be illegal to do this in some countries, so you’ve been forewarned. I’m doing this as where I live there isn’t a convenient way to buy genuine music. The CD or DVD you buy on the market are already made from pirated content. This tutorial is based of Mozilla Firefox browser.
The first and easier plugin to use is the Video DownloadHelper. The plugin helps you download video and media from ton of other sites and it works for Pandora music download too. After you’ve installed the plugin and go to pandora site. You’ll see a rolling animation on the plugin icon on the toolbar. This shows that it has grabbed a new media link on the tabs you’ve been browsing. When you press the icon, you’ll be show the items it grabbed from the current tab and from other tabs.
As shown in the above screenshot, the music file is piled up. The current song you’re listening is at the buttom of the list. And you’ll have to rename the files before you save them so you don’t have problem listening to the song you like later on.
Another plugin you can use to download from Pandora is the All Downloader Professional. The plugin is similar to Video DownloadHelper but this can sometimes miss the song detection. But this is solved by refreshing the page, then it grabs the current song playing. The reason to use this is to get the album art of the songs. Pandora doesn’t let you save images directly with right click menu. The plugin separates the detected content in video/audio, documents, images and other categories which allows you to easily save audio as well as the album art of the songs which is an added bonus.
Be sure to check the download location, because the plugin downloads the exact name from the file link and to your download folder and it looks like it’s doing nothing when you download but it will have downloaded the file a few times already. Checking file location will allow you to save the file with the name of your choice.
So there you have it, that’s how you download Pandora music onto your hard drive to listen later and with album art. But you’ll have to use another tool to link album art with the media file later. And both of the plugins are “no-restart plugins” so you don’t have to restart your browser to use them.
Warning: Again it is not legal to pirate music in some countries, and you could face legal consequences. So use this tutorial at your own risk.
Any comments or suggestions, let me know in the comments.
