Error: subscribe for more skips

[Zolmeister]

Whenever I try to play/launch pithos and error appears "Error: subscribe for more skips". (and won't play music)

The web version of pandora still works (pandora.com).
My account is a free one (not paid), but I rarely skip songs and this has never happened before. (maybe tomorrow my "limit" will reset?)

If the only solution to this is to pay for a subscription that's fine, but if it can be fixed then better.

[VastOne (vastone)]

Same issue for me.

Exact error is

Pandora returned an error
DAILY_SKIP_LIMIT_REACHED: subscribe for more skips

I noticed Pianobar is having the same issues

https://github.com/PromyLOPh/pianobar/issues/214

I am using Pithos 0.3.14 ... I just updated to Pithos 0.3.14 and did not see this n Pithos 0.3.13, although that could just be coincidence.

Like the OP, I never use the skip button.

[Allison Nelson (nelsonam)]

This happened to me as well. I switch stations a lot but don't skip.

[VastOne (vastone)]

An update to my issues today. Pithos started and worked fine. I closed the app 3 times, never once using skip, just a normal close and restart. Upon opening Pithos for the 4th time, I got the same error

[naaronne (naaronne)]

I suppose Pandora finally put validation server side, as opposed to having it in the client (not sure what they were thinking in the first place). But I to am experiencing the issue.

I don't mind paying, have in the past, my issue is once I get this message it is a whole day before the app starts working again.

[Adam Porter (alphapapa)]

I'm not an expert on the Pandora APIs, but I think what may be happening is this:

1. You start Pithos. It gets a list of four songs from Pandora.
2. You restart Pithos. It gets another list of four songs.
3. If you get too many song lists in a period of time, it considers you to have skipped songs, and there's some kind of limit on the server.

Clicking the skip button just downloads a song from URLs Pithos already has--it doesn't actually "ask for new songs" unless it's on the last song in the queue. So I'm guessing that restarting Pithos too often causes this.

I think that the Pandora servers don't handle all the skipping logic, but let the client handle some. Pithos, of course, doesn't implement those restrictions, so it probably bumps up against some limits on the server that the other clients would never encounter, because they'd hit their own limits.

Basically, I doubt it's a bug in Pithos, or that it can be worked around (other than using multiple accounts). If the Pandora server says, "No song for you!", well...you don't get a song. :)

[VastOne (vastone)]

I would agree Adam, and with pianobar having the same issue seems to verify it. I cannot tell if the 'gist' from the site I posted above with a 'working key' is a resolution there.

[Roland Dreier (roland.dreier)]

I agree that this isn't really a bug in Pithos but it does seem that Pithos probably needs to change to work better with Pandora now that they count skips on the server side. The problem (I guess) is that Pithos gets the next 4 songs in the playlist, and Pandora counts that as using some skips. Unfortunately it seems with the latest Pandora, we'll have to change Pithos to only get one song at a time (and not display the next songs), at least by default -- for subscribers I guess it would make sense to continue the current behavior.

[Paul Johnson (pajsouth)]

The skip limit can be reached without skipping at all. I leave pithos on and fall asleep to it, when I wake up it has given me this error. It only plays about 20 songs then shuts itself down.

[Roland Dreier (roland.dreier)]

Presumably the skip limit is hit without skipping because Pithos fetches multiple songs when it reaches the end of its current list, and Pandora treats the songs past the very next one as a skip.

Really it seems that Pithos will have to act more like the normal Pandora player and not fetch a song until it's done playing the previous one.

[mmxbass (mmxbass)]

Surprised this has gone as long as it has without even being triaged let alone not being completely fixed yet given how Pithos is basically not working at all due to this.

[VastOne (vastone)]

@mmxbass, Interesting because I have not seen his issue in over a week now.

[Allison Nelson (nelsonam)]

It's still happening to me. I agree with mmxbass, its weird because these things usually get sorted out quickly.

[Adam Haile (adammhaile)]

Just so everyone is aware, this time around, this is not the typical API change that could be just easily worked around.
See Promy's blog post for the technical details here: http://6xq.net/blog/2012/api/
But the basics of it are that, this time, Pandora is directly targeting 3rd party clients like Pithos and pianobar (and sadly mine, Elpis, that I just launched a couple months ago). This magic key that's been mentioned is basically a 32bit string that must be generated based on the *final* generated HTML of the pandora.com webpage. Meaning that you cannot just download the main HTML... you must download the HTML plus all CSS and javascript and then apply the CSS and javascript modifications to the page and THEN grab these several special div heights and hash them into a working key.

So, possible? Yes. Easy? Heck no.

I emailed Kevin back when this issue first came up and have not heard back from him yet and, since he hasn't posted on this bug yet, I'm not really sure what his intentions are but, from the looks of it now, even if we come up with a workable solution, Pandora is getting mighty serious about blocking us and it will just be a matter of time until it breaks again.

Also, yes, you guys are correct that sometimes it does work fine... but this is only as long as you basically never skip a song, change station or logout at the wrong time. It is spot-on that the API grabs 4 songs at a time, so that if you grab the next 4 song block and then switch stations or close the app and restart you can easily hit your 12 skip limit with out actually skipping 12 songs.

I've had users of Elpis still using it for a couple weeks now with no problem, but they never shut it down or skip.