Pandora, you’re great, but I need you more than how long you offer yourself and…let’s face it, I’m not paying money for any kinda of internet service.

Pandora sets a 40 hour listening cap on its free “subscription” and resets the number of listening hours at the top of every month, but I always hit that cap with like 2 or 3 days to go AND the last day of the month for me is always the longest, even longer without good music. So I need Pandora more. And until today, did not think it was possible.

Thanks to the wisdom of those at OSX Daily they have provided us with a way to “delete” this limit on a Mac, yes, but also on Windows (thanks for not leaving PC users out in the cold). Not having written about many Windows tips lately, I will post here how to do this on Windows.

First, log into your account (even though you can’t listen to music, you can still get to your account/profile). So for example, as of this writing, there are 4 boxes at the bottom. Click the one of the right “Your Bookmarked Songs.” Then click on “Share > Tell a Friend” at the top and send an email to another one of your email addresses. This way you can listen to the same station(s) you usually do.Then, as OSXDaily.com writes, on PC,

* Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects
Replace “USERNAME” with your user name
* Same as above, there will be a bunch of random folder names, you can delete them all, or just the ones containing ‘pandora’ in the name
* Now navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys
* Find the folder named ‘#pandora.com’ and delete it, or just delete all the files
* Finally, navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Cookies and delete everything labeled ‘pandora’

I haven’t been able to confirm if deleting these files actually deletes my saved radio stations (can’t imagine it would), but to be careful, I just moved the folders/files.

Then go to http://pandora.com/#/stations/create/ and sign up for a new account, using a different email address than at first. Once signed up, go to your email where you shared with yourself your radio  station and click the link. Then click on Listen. You can even bookmark your first “self” so you can access all of your other stations. Rating songs doesn’t work exactly, unless you break the link and make the station your own. Keep the station shared to keep it in its original state.

So now, you have another 40 hours of pure goodness. If you use this, let me know. And better yet, place the link to your favorite station in the comments.

UPDATE:  Oct 1st-listening limit reset: Signing back into your first account is doable AND all the stations are there. Also, I just found OpenPandora which lets you listen to your stations from a free windows desktop client (the alternative to is to pay $$ for pandora one). It looks just like the real thing. Try it out.

UPDATE: To make this process easier, I have created a batch file for Windows XP (may work on Vista or Windows 7). Running this file will automatically delete the files in the above directories. Download the file HERE. Unzip this file and it contains a .txt file which will open in Notepad. Where is says “USERNAME” replace with the name of your account found in that directory (for me on my windows PC, that[’s “coryc”).  Make sure the file paths as given above are correct for your computer. Then go to File>Save As, add “.bat” to the end of “DeletePandora” in the “File Name” field, change the “Save as type” field to “All files” and save it.
When you’re ready to run the program, just double click it. Presto. Let me know how it works for you. Oh yeah, after running the batch, don’t forget to delete your cookies in whatever browser you’re using.