Pandora and Proxychains

Background

• Pandora doesn’t work outside the states
• I keep forgetting how to set-up proxychains

Proxychains

Technically this article expects proxychains-ng, which seems to be the more up-to-date fork of the original proxychains.

1. Install proxychains-ng

   1# I am on archlinux..
   2sudo pacman -S proxychains-ng
   

2. Copy the configuration to the $HOME directory

   1cp /etc/proxychains.conf .
   

3. Edit said configuration to add some US-based proxy

In my particular case, I don’t keep the tor section enabled.

1tail $HOME/proxychains.conf

1#
2#       proxy types: http, socks4, socks5
3#        ( auth types supported: "basic"-http  "user/pass"-socks )
4#
5[ProxyList]
6# add proxy here ...
7# meanwile
8# defaults set to "tor"
9# socks4 	127.0.0.1 9050

I actually use Windscribe for my VPN needs, and they have a neat SOCKS5 proxy setup. This works out to a line like socks5 $IP $PORT $USERNAME $PASS being added. The default generator gives you a pretty server name, but to get the IP I use ping $SERVER and put that in the conf file. Any online DNS resolver will also do the trick, like this one.

For inclusive split tunneling, add the following (minimally):

1tuner.pandora.com
2audio-usc-mp1-t1-2-v4v6.pandora.com

At some point it might be nice to actually have this done via a WireGuard configuration to cut out the app in the middle..

Pandora

I use the excellent pianobar frontend.

1. Get pianobar

   1sudo pacman -S pianobar
   

2. Use it with proxychains

   1proxychains pianobar
   

3. Profit

I also like setting up some defaults to make life easier:

1mkdir -p ~/.config/pianobar
2vim ~/.config/pianobar/config

I normally set the following (inspired by the ArchWiki):

1audio_quality = {high, medium, low}
2autostart_station = $ID
3password = "$PASS"
4user = "$emailID"

The autostart_station ID can be obtained by inspecting the terminal output during an initial run. I usually set it to the QuickMix station.