Artists: What is normal with my station?

[NADRIP]

I have had a station on Pandora for less than a week now.  I have two songs and metrics show there were two station adds 5 days ago, so it seems both my songs were added to my artist station.  However, when I've tried to play my artist station, I've played it for hours with many songs played but my own songs never come up.  Is this normal?  What is the likelihood a song from an artist will come up on that artist's station?

Because my songs never seem to come up on the radio, I've streamed my own songs directly.  My metrics show 43 lifetime streams but no streams over any time period I put in, even looking back a full year.  Is this because I'm streaming directly and not via radio?  Is this normal?

My songs aren't eligible for your Fresh Cuts so please don't suggest that.  There are multiple reasons why but one is that the Pandora approval process took more than 3 months.  In fact, I actually have 9 songs but only 2 have cleared the process so far.  But on other streaming sites like Spotify they've been on those for months.  I understand curated vs not curated, but I don't understand a process that makes a song ineligible for Fresh Cuts and then no workaround or allowance by Fresh Cuts to allow a song that wasn't processed fast enough to meet its guidelines.  Apparently this is normal, so this part is just a mild rant not a question.

And, yes, I did submit forms for all of my songs that aren't yet on Pandora maybe around 4 weeks ago now.  So please don't suggest that.

I have investigated the feature track and feature song tools, but my songs are ineligible because they have no streams that count (they have lots of streams in the past days that have increased their lifetime streams but which don't register as streams otherwise).  However, when I look at these tools, I do not see my songs.  The help article says I should see them greyed out if they don't have enough streams, but I don't see them at all.  Is the help article wrong?  Or is there possibly yet another problem with this site causing my songs to not show up for these tools?  And is that same problem, I wonder, possibly also causing my songs to not appear when I play the radio? - like they are there and I can play them directly and there is an indication two songs have been added to my artist radio station yet if the songs don't actually appear on the tools where they are supposed to appear is it also possible the songs don't actually appear for radio play which may help explain why I never see them when I play the radio?  What is normal here? - are the help articles usually correct which would indicate a serious problem here or are help articles unreliable which, I guess, indicates a different serious problem?

I went to a zoom meeting and mentioned this to several AMP people there and got no helpful feedback there.  They had no immediate help (just said they didn't know the answer) and there was no follow-up on the problem.

It seems not everyone has had all the problems I have but for me the entire experience as a new artist on Pandora has been frustrating.  Nothing seems to work like it's supposed to.  Either help articles are inaccurate or else, if they're accurate, then the problems that are indicted by things happening (or not happening) different from how they should be happening according to the help articles are ignored/not followed through by the people in official capacities.  I've dealt with issues on other sites - they're not perfect - but I have spent a huge amount more time and effort on Pandora trying to get my music up and running than any other site and yet even basic things that everyone else in the world got done in days months ago still can't get done here.

mod edit: changed title for clarity

[NADRIP]

Wow!  I guess if you "build err post it they will come"  I got a mess of simultaneous emails a few minutes ago and it looks like all 9 of my current songs have now made it onto Pandora.  Thank you to whoever read this and unblocked whatever was clogging the system.  Have my fingers crossed for the other items!

[ChrisPandora · Accepted solution]

Hey @NADRIP - We appreciate you letting us know about this.

I am so happy to hear that your pending submissions were finally accepted! Congratulations - I hope it was worth the wait 😅

As for your songs not playing on radio, I have escalated this with our AMP Support team. Be on the lookout for a follow-up email from them after they've had some time to look into this.

We appreciate your patience and welcome you with open arms to our Community 🌴

[NADRIP]

As an update 8 days after my original post, when I posted, I had 2 songs on Pandora and I had an artist radio station but it didn't seem to have either of my songs on it.  I had 7 other songs that had been submitted to Pandora for months.

As of today, I have 9 songs on Pandora and I have a new artist radio station which seems to have 2 of my songs on it.  However, neither of these songs on it are the songs I already had on Pandora - they are 2 of the 7 that were on hold for months.

What I am noticing is that most stat categories only show up for the two songs I have which are radio-eligible.  Though some stats, like lifetime streams clearly includes numbers from songs which are not radio eligible.  So, for instance, I see 12 streams in one section, but that's the streams my two radio eligible songs have gotten, but also see 101 lifetime streams, which includes streams to non-radio-eligible songs.  Only the radio eligible songs show up in the catalogue section or as options for a campaign.

I have only had one of my songs actually stream on the radio, 3 streams, and 2 or those streams were, it seems, a kind of preset.  I had a developer message me that my radio was now working and he had tried it and the first song that played was my song "Coulda Stayed".  So that's 1 of the 2 streams.  Then I did the same things and, sure enough, the first song to play was "Coulda Stayed".  So it seems it was preset to play first.  But after that, I didn't hear "Coulda Stayed" again on my artist radio until today, and have yet to hear my other song via radio play.  I have been able to stream my songs directly by watching an ad.  So, I've been doing that to get them some streams.  I'm curious, if I listen to my songs directly, and then I play my artist radio, does that make my songs less likely to play on my artist radio?

I heard advice about featured songs to wait and get some streams from other sources, but what I'm seeing is that Pandora has not played these two radio-approved songs at all outside of the 3 radio streams on my artist station I already documented and my own direct streams.  So it's not like the algorithm is learning anything.  So maybe I should use the featured song option as soon as it's eligible?  At least then the songs might start getting some play elsewhere?  But, the general problem of many things not working the way Pandora's videos and posted advice and monthly meetings suggest things are supposed to work is still happening.  And that makes it very hard for me to try to use the tools in AMP - I mean what if I feature a track and it continues to get 0 plays outside of people specifically playing my artist playlist or streaming my songs directly?  And then I just lose the ability to feature the track?  I'm happy there's been positive progress but other issues remain unresolved.

[NADRIP]

update:  I did have my other radio-ready song play on my artist station today.  Still zero streams by any of my songs outside of my artist radio station or me streaming my songs directly.

[NADRIP]

update:  I now have 8 of my 9 songs on artist radio stations (they are on different stations as some of my songs were collaborations or used a featured artist).  6 of my songs were added to radio in the past few days, 2 have been on for a few weeks.  1 is still waiting.  Outside of artist radio station plays or streaming songs directly (mostly me in both cases), the two songs that have been on radio the longest have a few algorithmic streams.  One of them has 11 streams and the other 1 stream.  The one that has 11 algorithmic streams is also a featured track now for 13 days but doesn't have any featured spins.