Pithos running commercials now!

[cybrsaylr]

Loved listening to Pithos because all its excellent music was commercial free.

Did that all end? Tonight noticed Pithos is now running commercial ads about every 15 minutes. Anyone know what's going on? Also are there any other Internet music stations that are still unpolluted by ads and remain commercial free?

[QIII]

Move to The Cafe

[cybrsaylr]

Was hoping to give this Pithos discovery a wide as possible exposure, so thought the General Forum was the ideal place to achieve that.
Looks like the Cafe will not give the wide exposure that was hoped.....ijs

Feel like this thread was sent off to the boonies.....lol

[coffeecat]

so thought the General Forum was the ideal place to achieve that.

It wasn't. From General Help forum description:


All your general support questions for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu.

This is not a technical support thread and the Cafe is where this sort of discussion has taken place for years now.

[Erik1984]

Soma FM is commercial free but they ask for donations every now and then in between the music (that's how they can be commercial free in the first place). http://somafm.com/ Some of their channels are included in the bookmarks list of RadioTray.

[lykwydchykyn]

Pithos is a pandora client. Pandora plays ads. If you want ad-free pandora, get a subscription to Pandora. It's like $4 a month or something.

For a while, I guess, Pithos did not support streaming the ads. This was bad for Pandora, because they have to pay royalties for broadcasting these songs, just like a radio station ( I know because ASCAP is always griping about how Pandora isn't paying them enough ). I can guarantee you that nobody is playing commercial copyrighted music for free without ads (or some other revenue stream, like donations) legally.

If you want legally free music, check out a service like Jamendo where people post their original content under a creative commons license.

[Frogs Hair]

I have yet to see or hear any ads, but have seen no updates for Pithos since installing 13.10 . I have elpis for Win 7 and see no ads there either. Is this up-coming ? http://code.google.com/p/elpis-pandora-client/

[cybrsaylr]

Used to listen to Pandora but didn't like the ads. Switched to their Pithos client after hearing it was ad free months ago and loved it. Usually have it running some music all the time when on the computer. Have Pithos 0.3.17 version and yesterday I was surprised and disappointed to start hearing ads that run about every 15 minutes now.

[Frogs Hair]

I ran Pithos 3.17 for three hours last night and had no ads . :confused: I should note that last.fm scrobbling hasn't been authorized and don't know if that makes a difference , but again I have no adds today.

[cybrsaylr]

Interesting Frogs Hair.

Running Pithos now and gets ads ~ every 15 minutes.
Went into Pithos Settings > Preferences and see that 'authorize last.fm scrobbling' button at the bottom. When it is clicked, it opens Firefox and takes me to a, Log in to Last.fm, page to sign in. At that point I cancel because I stopped using Last.fm because they also run ads. Would signing in to Last.fm make any difference for Pithos?

FWIW not sure If I signed into Last.fm in the past here and forgot about doing that......

[Frogs Hair]

I don't use last fm anymore because the client is no longer free in the U.S. I don't understand why you have ads and I don't unless it's a regional thing . Both CBS and Slacker run ads and CBS now owns last .fm . Below are my settings. My stations are self created and not the recommended genera's provided by Pandora.

[cybrsaylr]

That is strange, you are lucky.

My settings were like yours, also self create stations, only I had mp3 instead of aacplus.
Just switched to aacplus to see if that matters......

PS: just got a commercial so aacplus doesn't matter....lol

[Frogs Hair]

I will report back if I start receiving ads , meanwhile , I will leave the settings as they are . :)

[cybrsaylr]

Curious what is the difference between aacplus and mp3 settings?


Oh and why are my Beans froze at 1,143?
They used to go up with each post.

[Erik1984]

You don't receive beans for posts in the Cafe.

[Iowan]

Oh and why are my Beans froze at 1,143?
They used to go up with each post.Posts in non-support areas (such as the Cafe) don't increase bean count.

[Frogs Hair]

Curious what is the difference between aacplus and mp3 settings?

Search results indicate better sound quality with mp3.

[cybrsaylr]

Posts in non-support areas (such as the Cafe) don't increase bean count.

Thanks, did not know that.

[cybrsaylr]

Search results indicate better sound quality with mp3.

OK, switched back to mp3.

[cybrsaylr]

Pithos stopped running those commercials! Haven't heard any yesterday and today.....so far. Will keep my fingers crossed and hope there will be no need to seek another alternitive to Pithos.

[cybrsaylr]

Spoke too soon.....Pithos just ran a commercial!

[joe4ska]

You can try pianobar but it doesn't work unless you're running 13.04 or 13.10.

I'd suggest paying the subscription for Pandora One which unlocks Hi-Fi mp3 playback and makes your account commerical free.

Pithos and Pianobar are not official Pandora clients so it's important in my opinion to be a paying Pandora One if you want to listen to commerical free feeds from Pandora.

I can confirm that if you pay for Pandora One Pithos and Pianobar will not play advertisements.

[Frogs Hair]

Still no ads. ??

[Frogs Hair]

When logged on to the Pandora site you can set opt out in advertising preferences regardless whether you have a subscription or not . I had not opted out and still had no adds while using Pithos.

[kruykaze]

I started getting commercials today for the first time. I've been using Pithos daily for years.

[newb85]

I started getting commercials today for the first time. I've been using Pithos daily for years.
Sounds like my timeline.

Further, I've recently been experiencing periods where Pithos can't load the music fast enough, constantly says "Buffering", and keeps having split-second hiccups. (No, it's not my internet connection, because I can run a speed test while observing this behavior, and get 3Mbps, while Pithos is pulling less than 25kbps.)

[newb85]

Yesterday'supdate seems to have taken care of the hiccup issue. However, still have ads.

[Frogs Hair]

I've been listening for over six hours and not a single ad ! I wonder how the ads are being served and if its regional ? Pithos 0.3.17 My Windows Client has no ads either .

[sicvolo]

I have an idea of what's could be happening.

Pandora wants to push ads to non-standard clients to monetize on the OpenSource/Linux/geeky audience. Right now the only way they can reliably do this is by inserting ads into the stream as short songs.
Now, they don't want to do it for everyone, because for the normal/sanctioned clients it doubles the ad rate. The normal clients show ads via a side pull, so the ads in the stream would be an extra annoyance. It's hard to tell clients apart thought, because internally Pithos uses the "android-generic" client key, same one that other android clients use.

To get around this problem Pandora runs some heuristics on the servers to determine if you (the user) are a normal client user or pianobar/pithos/etc user. If you don't make the cut, you start hearing the ads inside the stream. If you do, you hear no ads, until the next time they run stats on your account. You could possibly sway the heuristics the other way by running Pandora's standard web/androd client for a while, fall below the threshold and thus stop getting the stream ads inside pianobar/pithos.

[QIII]

No ads on pithos for me, but a dump truck full on free Pandora on my cell phone.

[Mike_Walsh]

Loved listening to Pithos because all its excellent music was commercial free.

Did that all end? Tonight noticed Pithos is now running commercial ads about every 15 minutes. Anyone know what's going on? Also are there any other Internet music stations that are still unpolluted by ads and remain commercial free?

You think that's bad, you want to try listening to what used to be Sky.fm.

I've listened to it for quite some time. At first, a couple of years ago, it was an advert or two every half hour or so. That, I could live with. The last six months or so, they increased that to every 15-20 mins. Bearable....just. But it's got beyond a joke now.

Sky.fm has now become Radio Tunes, and the advert frequency has since increased to one every 5 mins or so!

I listen mainly to smooth jazz, and R'n'B. Anybody got any suggestions for an alternative source?


Regards,

Mike.

[Frogs Hair]

I still haven't heard a single commercial since this thread began the only thing I can think of is that I did not confirm on the Pandora site when I set up Pithos.

[sicvolo]

No ads on pithos for me, but a dump truck full on free Pandora on my cell phone.

That's the point. If you are a regular official Pandora client user you will not get the ads in Pithos. If not, you will hear them in Pithos.

I've just validated that theory - had a bunch of ads in Pithos, spent one evening listening to Pandora on the cell phone, now the ads are gone from Pithos.

Let's see how long till they catch up.

[QIII]

You missed the point. I don't have a paid Pandora account at all. Anywhere. When I listen on my Android phone I get ads. I don't when I use Pithos on my machine at home. Both without a paid account.

[newb85]

I don't have a paid account, either. I've gone through periods where Pithos would play ads, but my experience is that generally, it doesn't.