Want to share a work around I am using with Mazda Connect + Alexa when playing Pandora.
I have a 2024 MX-5 (Gen 7 Mazda Connect). Alexa and Pandora work well with Mazda Connect - you can see title/artist and the correct album art, voice commands and the steering wheel controls work as expected. And, since it's streaming through the Wi-Fi connection from your smart phone (Mazda Connect Wi-Fi Client), it's not being compressed by Bluetooth. All wonderful.
One problem: the Alexa Skill for Pandora really, really struggles with voice command to select a playlist or a radio station. There are MANY posts in this community on this issue.
I have a ton of playlists and saved radio stations and I vastly prefer visual scanning these on my phone's screen, vs. trying to recall their exact name for a voice prompt (which usually fails, as Alexa/Pandora seem to give preference to a global selection over anything in your collection, unless it's with a bizarre name).
For example: '80s Hits (a playlist I created in my collection) usually resolves to a Pandora collection called 80s Hits with a completely different track listing. This issue occurs with Siri and CarPlay, as well.
What to do? Simple. I stop playback via Alexa, scroll/swipe on my phone to find the playlist, tap and play it, then stop it. Then, restart Pandora playback via Alexa. It always restarts playback with whatever was last played by your account.
"Alexa, stop music"
[me] tap on Pandora on phone, pick something from the collection, play it, then pause playback
"Alexa, play Pandora"
That's it! I keep my phone mounted on the dash, so it's easy to do this before I start driving.
