Pandora and other U.S.-based streaming music services have long since shuttered their doors to international listeners. Its not that they wanted to, rather the xenophobic restrictions are the result of U.S. and international copyright laws and restrictions.

Pandora is reportedly working out international licensing deals, but, as Tim Westerberg writes in a message to international users, "the pace of global licensing is hard to predict, but we have the ultimate goal of being able to offer our service everywhere."

So what are our overseas friends to do in the mean time? 

Well one solution is to use a proxy server. Pandora blocks international users by blocking non-U.S. IP addresses. But if you connect to a server in the U.S. and allow it act as a "proxy" between your PC and Pandora, Pandora will think you're connecting from inside the U.S., making it possible to listen to Pandora from anywhere in the world.

So how do you use a proxy? Grab a cup of coffee and let's dig into the wonderful world of proxies.

== Where can I find proxy servers? ==

The answer is everywhere. The problem though is that you aren't the only one that can find them. Pandora is very likely aware of many proxy servers as well, so you're essentially embarking on a game of cat and mouse. And you're the mouse.

We could give you a list of proxy servers, but if we did half of them wouldn't work, and many others would be blacklisted. Sometimes you have to try out twenty servers before you hit one that works. 

Rather than try to get too specific, we'll just take a look at the general methods and how to use a proxy server.

== Roll Your Own Proxy ==

The best and most likely to work solution is to run your own proxy server. To do that you'll need to have some web hosting space on a server in the U.S. Also make sure that your server either runs PHP for [http://freshmeat.net/projects/phpproxy/ PHPProxy] or CGI scripts for [http://www.jmarshall.com/tools/cgiproxy/ CGIProxy]. 

Installation instructions can be found in both downloads and so long as you're familiar with PHP or Perl they aren't too hard to set up.

Once you have to server running, hop over to our [http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Traverse_Corporate_Firewalls How To Traverse Corporate Firewalls] tutorial and skip down to last section which contains all the instructions you need to connect to your new proxy server via SSH. 

== Other methods: Firefox ==

Firefox and some other web browsers offer ways to set up a proxy between you and the site you're connecting to. Hook up Firefox to run through an anonymous proxy and you should be able to connect to Pandora.

Open up the Options/Preferences panel in Firefox click the Advanced tab. Under Advanced you should see a sub-tab for Network, click that and then press the Settings button. That will open another panel with an option to manually set up a proxy server. Just enter the settings for your new proxy server and you're away.

If you haven't set up a custom proxy server don't worry. The trick then is to find a working proxy server that you use to fool Pandora. Once you find some proxy servers, just enter the settings in the Firefox panel we opened earlier.

Some sites that provide lists of proxies include [http://www.publicproxyservers.com/ Public Proxy Servers[, [http://www.proxz.com/ Proxz] or [http://www.stayinvisible.com/ Stay Invisible]. Remember, it's a hit or miss affair so don't give up if the first few you try don't work.

If you'd like more options in Firefox, [http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/ FoxyProxy] is essentially the same as the built in system, but with more options. FoxyProxy can automatically switch connections across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns and rules you define. For instance you could create a server proxy for Pandora.com only and do the rest of browsing as you normally would without having to manually switch back and forth.

== Web based Proxies ==

There are literally thousands of web based proxy services out there. Unfortunately none of the ones I tested worked with Pandora. In theory, services like [https://proxify.com/ Proxify], [http://www.the-cloak.com/ The Cloak] or [http://www.vtunnel.com/ VTunnel] should work, but in my testing they didn't -- YMMV.

One method I tried that seems to work is pipe Pandora through Google Translate. Although it isn't designed to be one, Translate ends up working like a proxy. [http://http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|fr&u=www.pandora.com http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|fr&u=www.pandora.com]. I haven't tested it outside the U.S., but it should, theoretically, work.

== Other Options ==

Other options include combining [http://www.torproject.org/ Tor] and [http://www.privoxy.org/ Privoxy] to set up anonymous browsing. The problem there is that, just because you're anonymous, doesn't mean you're using a U.S. IP address.


== The Future ==

As we mentioned in the beginning Pandora is reportedly working on licensing deal with individual countries, but who knows how long that will take. If none of the above methods work for you, you can always check in periodically with [http://globalpandora.com/ Global Pandora] which was trying to do the hard work for you. The site managed to work for a couple weeks, but has since shut down. It claims it will rise again, but don't hold your breathe.

We'd love to see Pandora available globally, but it may well be some time before that happens. In the mean time, hopefully one of these methods will work for you. If you have other ideas, be sure to add them.