pianobar

pianobar is a free/open-source, console-based client for the personalized online radio Pandora.

Features

pianobar screenshot
  • play and manage (create, add more music, delete, rename, ...) stations
  • rate songs and explain why they have been selected
  • upcoming songs/song history
  • customize keybindings and text output
  • remote control and eventcmd interface (send tracks to last.fm, for example)
  • proxy support for listeners outside the USA

Download

There are community provided packages available for most Linux distributions (see your distribution’s package manager), Mac OS X (see MacPorts) and *BSD as well as a native Windows port.

Source code

The current pianobar release is 2013.05.19 (sha256, sign). More recent and experimental code is available at github and the local gitweb. Older releases are available in the attic.

FAQ

Protocol incompatible

pianobar fails with the message “Protocol incompatible. Please upgrade libpiano.” Help!

Don’t panic. Pandora modifies the protocol now and then and it takes some time to figure out what they changed. Search the bug tracker and file a new report if no-one has done this yet.

Audio output

The audio output does not work as expected. What can I do?

pianobar uses libao and most problems are related to a broken libao configuration. Have a look at issue #167 for example.

Donations

Can I donate money? Do you have a Flattr/Bitcoin/… account?

No, money is not necessary to continue working on pianobar. There are many other ways to support pianobar: Reporting bugs, creating cool stuff based on pianobar, blogging about it and the most important one: Keeping Pandora alive.

External projects

Addons

Scripts and wrappers for pianobar:

control-pianobar
Scripts that interact with pianobar entirely through notification bubbles and hotkeys
pianobar.el (1, 2)
emacs interface for pianobar

Clients

3rd party clients for pandora.com:

pyRadio
Python GUI for the N900, based on XBMC code, replaces pianobar wrapper pyPianobar
pithos
Python/GTK desktop client
XBMC Pandora Radio script
Python script for XBMC (media center)
Standalone Pandora Player
modified OpenWrt router
pandoroid
open source Java client for Android-based phones
Elpis
open source Windows client written in C#
pianod
Pandora UNIX daemon, based on pianobar

Standalone devices

PandoraBar
Beagleboard-based radio device running pianobar
Pandora’s Box
Raspberry Pi-based standalone devices running pianobar