Android: Stations Switch Unprompted

[ChristinaATL]

How do I stop at my stations from automatically switching? I can be listening to one station or album and then Boom! A switch sound occurs and it goes to another station. it's frustrating. I have a subscription but I'm about over this! I could be listening to Drake and then it'll automatically change to my customized gospel station.  Ugghhhh 

Moderator Edit: Changed title for clarity

[BeachGeek]

When I originally had the problem and posted here was years back.
I don't really remember.
Haven't had a problem lately, but I'm on free plan. If I remember
correctly, originally it would jump drop whatever I was listening to, and
play an offline station.
But really, it was so long ago, I don't clearly remember.

[traci]

This is happening to me too. I have just opened a case about it under support. This happens when I am listening to a station I have picked. It switches to a different station that I didn't choose. I am listening to the Pandora App in Android Auto. My phone is a Samsung Z Fold 5 and all my programs are up to date. My carrier is T-Mobile. I am listening on mobile data, no need for android auto when I am home in my living room.  I am a premium user. Your program switches from my station Meg Radio to a different Station Meg Christian Radio. I have gone through the troubleshooting steps. Furthermore, your program won't let me switch back to Meg Radio when I go to the list where you choose stations and pick Meg Radio. It persists in playing Meg Christian Radio even though I manually picked Meg Radio. The only way I can switch back to the station I want to listen to is to take my phone out of my pocket, launch Pandora, and manually switch to Meg Radio. As you can imagine this is a very dangerous maneuver while I am driving and the fact that I do it should tell you just how irritated and frustrated I am that your program is telling me which station to listen to and it won't let me change back to the station I want to listen to.  I didn't do anything to be able to listen offline on either station. It sounds like a neat feature, and I would like that capability for both stations. But first, you need to fix this problem, or you will lose a premium user. I will not tolerate your program dictating which station I listen to. I will select the station I want to listen to, or I won't use your service.

This is not a solution. Marking it as having a solution probably makes you less likely to actually find a solution. You just offered troubleshooting advice, no fix for the actual problem.

FYI, autoplay was already turned off on my phone and i have this problem. I am glad it worked for you but I am putting this here so that the tech support people won't think this problem is solved. Pandora, this doesn't fix the problem for me.

Just touching base with you. The hype on the support page says you guys monitor the community 24/7 so I thought someone might have gotten back to me after my post last night. Still early days so I am not upset or anything but I wanted to be sure you were still monitoring this thread.  Even if you don't yet have a real reply for me, please let me know you saw my message. Thanks.

Moderator Edit: Merged comments

[AdamPandora]

@traci I definitely understand your frustration.

When you have the chance, can you send over a bit more info about your device?

• Model: Samsung Z Fold 5 
• Carrier: T-Mobile
• Android version (Settings > About Phone):
• Build number (Settings > About Phone):
• Android Security Patch Level, if noted on your device (Settings > About Phone):
• Pandora version:
  • If you can open Pandora, go to Profile, then select Settings. Scroll to the bottom of the screen for the version number.
  • If you can't open Pandora: from Android Home screen > Android Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > Find Pandora

Additionally:

• Does this only occur when streaming Pandora through Android Auto? Or does it also occur when streaming directly from your phone?
• Are you using voice commands when connected to Android Auto?

Let me know what you can find out.

---

In the meantime, I've enabled a trace on your account to help me further investigate. For this trace to be useful, please clear the app data and cache on your Samsung with the following steps:

1. Open your device Settings
2. Tap Apps
3. Scroll down to find Pandora
4. Select Storage
5. On the storage details page tap Clear Data.

When these steps have been correctly completed you will be asked to log back into your account. Please note, as Premium subscriber, you may need to re-download some of your offline content after completing these steps.The next time a station changes, please note the time and date and I can take a closer look.

Use your mobile device only when conditions allow and as permitted by applicable law.

[traci]

Android Version 14
Build number UP1A.231005.007.F946USQS4CXG6
Security patch level August 1, 2024
Pandora Version 2407.1.1 (ANDROID - TUNER 24071101)

I mostly listen to Pandora in my car via Android Auto. I don't know if it
would do it if I listened on my phone or my smart TV more often. I can tell
you that the change it makes is uniform across all my devices so if it has
hijacked Meg Radio and changed it to Meg Christian Radio it will be Meg
Christian Radio on my phone and also on my smart TV.

I am using the touch screen on my infotainment center in my Chevrolet Bolt
EV 2020. I don't trust voice control, in the old days you never knew what
would happen and I can't get used to over riding my sense of caution now.

I cleared it and i have started the downloading process again on my
stations.

Thanks for your help.

Traci

[AdamPandora]

@traci Thanks for following up.

I do see you currently have two stations created from the same artist:

• Meg Christian Radio (this appears to be the station you created first, and has the most thumb ratings) 
• Meg Radio (this appears to be a newer station that was recently created)

I recommend deleting the newer station (Meg Radio) to avoid any future confusion with this.

Let me know if you'd like to proceed.

[traci]

No, that is totally unacceptable. I have curated both stations for
different moods and I want to listen to both of them when I am in the mood.
I just want to listen to the one i want to listen to without Pandora
deciding to switch between them without any instruction from me. We need to
solve the problem with the operation of your program, not trash my
carefully thought out content that I have actually spent years developing.

[dhaag23]

Could it be that people are getting switched to an offline station? Perhaps with some devices/os's the algorithm is more sensitive and switches offline more easily. People should have heard the clip that plays when you go offline though.

[traci]

It is hard to know if the problem is under control because it seemed to happen at random. But, it hasn't happened in several days and I have a hypothesis about why. Someone else said their problem went away when they went to settings, advanced and turned off autoplay. Autoplay was already turned off on my phone, so I didn't think that had anything to do with it in my case. However, there is another similar option in advanced settings, auto-start, which was turned on. It seemed similar enough to autoplay that it might cause similar problems, so I turned it off. Since I turned off auto-start the problem has not reappeared. Again, that could just be a coincidence, and it may fail tomorrow, but it is encouraging.

Turning off autoplay or auto-start, both fall under the heading of workarounds, not solutions. Bottom line is that there shouldn't be any possibility that Pandora will switch stations unprompted. The fact that it does is a major bug. Pandora should make fixing that bug a priority because it has gone on years too long. A workaround will keep me happy for a while, but I had turned on auto-start because I wanted that functionality.  The work around means I sacrifice that functionality and none of us should have to do that. When we put the program on a station it should stay on that station until we explicitly change the station. I want it to stay on the station I put it on no matter what choices I make in settings and no matter if the change happens during the switch from online to offline mode. If you don't want to make that the program default, at least give us a setting that will let us turn on 'never change stations unprompted'.

[BamaFan4Life]

Does anyone have any problems with Pandora automatically changing stations even when you have full service/Wi-Fi?

[AdamPandora]

@BamaFan4Life I'd be happy to help with any questions you have, but I will need additional information to do so.

Can you explain your issue a bit further?

What exactly do you mean when you say that Pandora is automatically changing stations?

Also, are you listening to Pandora on a computer or on a device?

1. If you are on a computer, are you listening from:
• A Mac or Windows computer?
• Our website, or the desktop app? If you're listening from our website, what browser are you using?
2. If you are on a device, what is the make and model (and carrier, if applicable)?
3. Is there an error message? If so, what does it say?
4. Can you provide me with a screenshot of what you're seeing?

The more details you're able to provide, the better equipped I'll be to help.

I look forward to hearing back.

[BamaFan4Life]

If I'm listening to a Rock Station it'll change to one of the other
stations on my Playlist after just a few songs. I listen to it on my
Android Tablet and sometimes my Phone (also Android).

It didn't used to do this until about a week ago. I check on a regular
basis for updates.

[AdamPandora]

Thanks for following up, @BamaFan4Life.

I moved your post over to this existing thread: Android: Stations Switch Unprompted

I've enabled a trace on your account to help us better understand what's happening.

For this trace to be useful, we'll need you to run through our troubleshooting steps: Troubleshooting for Android Devices

Let me know how it goes.

[pbainter]

I completely agree. My shuffle setting is off. I also have a subscription and I'm ready to leave pandora altogether. Don't do my thinking for me!!!

Moderator Edit: Format

[AdamPandora]

@pbainter I'd be happy to help with any questions you have, but I will need additional information to do so.

Can you explain your issue a bit further? The more details you're able to provide, the better equipped I'll be to help.

I look forward to hearing back.

[pbainter]

Hello, I'm not sure what more I can tell you.

There are times when switching from one station to another doesn't happen
at all. Then I'll have a day where I'm playing a particular station and it
will switch away from it over and over again. Meaning that I'm playing
songs from a specific station, no individual selections. Then, it will
pause and then the next song will come up from a different station. I
recognize it's from a different station and will stop the song and switch
back to the first station. It will play one song and then immediately pause
and switch to a different station. It seems to do this perhaps 4 to 6 times
and at that point I usually give up and just shut down Pandora and do
something else. This last time, I rebooted my phone and that seemed to
help. Also, I noticed this last time, when it did switch stations on me, it
sounded some kind of alert sound to let me know the station changed. I
didn't ever have that before.

Hope this helps,
Paul

[AdamPandora]

@pbainter I've enabled a trace on your account to help us better understand what's happening.

For this trace to be useful, we'll need you to run through our troubleshooting steps: Troubleshooting for Android Devices

If this happens again after completing the troubleshooting steps linked above, can you please send me:

• the date and time your stations switched unprompted
• the name of the station you were listening to initially, and the name of the station the app switched to unprompted
• a screenshot of the now playing screen showing the new station that the app switched to

Thanks for working with me on this.

[traci]

Actually, I may have discovered a work-around. One of the other people in
the community mentioned that the problem stopped happening for them when
they turned off Autoplay in the advanced settings. That didn't directly
help me because it was already turned off in my app. But, Auto-Start was
right beside Autoplay, and I had turned that on. I decided to turn off
Auto-Start as an experiment. Since I turned off Auto-Start my stations
haven't been switched. Before I did that Pandora was auto switching
stations on me several times a week. In the weeks since then it hasn't auto
switched. Since it happened more or less randomly when it happened I can't
know for sure, but it has been long enough without a problem I am starting
to feel cautiously optimistic.

But, don't take away that I think the problem is fixed. You created
Autoplay and Auto-Start for reasons. The problem isn't fixed if both of
them have to be turned off in order to play the stations we want to play
without interruption. Pandora needs to fix this problem so that we can turn
our features back on. It is a work-around and it keeps me a little bit more
content but a work-around isn't a fix. Fix the problem Pandora. It is
ridiculous that your users have to put up with this situation.