How to Record a Pandora Radio Station for Offline Listening

Pandoar Radio has revolutionized radio for many people. An online 'radio' station, Pandora is the by product of years of research by many people on the listening habits of individuals. Run by the Music Genome Project, Pandora radio is free for anyone and allows listeners to make custom 'stations' for music of their choice.

What makes Pandora unique, however, is the level to which they can correctly pick music you like. Enter a group whose music you very much enjoy, and you'll be met with a large number of songs by other groups that have similar music styles - the odds are very high that you'll enjoy a great deal of the songs you hear.

If you have a favorite radio station, you may find yourself becoming addicted to listening to it. The convenience of a custom, like-able radio station that plays all your favorites with no work on your part is enough to make a person cringe at the thought of creating custom CDs. If you find yourself wanting to listen to your favorite Pandora radio station while in the car or away from a computer without Internet access, this article is for you.

The following will demonstrate how to record a Pandora radio station and save it to either a CD or mp3 player.

Step 1: Download and install a digital recording software application to your computer if you don't already have one. There are many options, but the best one for this project is Audacity, as it is free and works very well.

Step 2: Once Audacity is downloaded, you will need to set it up. Navigate to View > Float Mixer Toolbar - choose Stereo Mix from the drop-down menu. Next, navigate to Audacity Preferences and set the channel to Mono, then select your soundcard in the Recording Device tab.

Step 3: Open Pandora radio and pause the station before the first song begins playing. Click 'Record' on Audacity, and then after a one or two second pause, click the PLAY button on Pandora. Audacity will automatically begin recording the audio. Remember that it is simply recording the sounds coming through your soundcard, so doing anything else on your computer that produces sounds will also be recorded.

Step 4: After an hour or however long you want to record, you can press the STOP button on Audacity to stop the recording. You will now have a (large) file that your songs are recorded to. Depending on what you want to do with these, follow one of the two steps below:

Transfer to MP3 Player

This is as simple as connecting your player to your computer with it's data transfer cable and transferring the song to the device.

Save to CD

If your computer has a CD/DVD burner, this is also simple. You'll need a blank CD and a program to burn the song. Nero is a good option and is available on many computers. A free option is DeepBurner.

Insert the CD and wait for it to be recognized. Click the button that says something similar to 'Burn Music CD'. Add the song file and click BURN. Wait for your computer to eject the disc, remove it, and test it in a CD player.

Note: this is a legally gray area. This method is technically legal, in that it doesn't break any copyright encryption's on the songs. It may, however, still be legal in certain countries or districts. Be sure to read up on the laws in your local area or country before following these instructions.