Web: Play Button Doesn't Work After Premium Access

[dbronner]

I have a pandora plus account and got an ad/warning that I need to use pandora premium for some reason. After that, no songs play - clicking the play button skips to the next song and nothing ever plays.

Playback works fine on mobile, but nothing plays on desktop chrome.

[AlyssaPandora]

Hi there, @dbronner. 👋

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. 

• Are you attempting to initiate a Premium session when this happens?
  • Does this happen with a particular ad? Is it the same ad each time?
  • Do you know what brand / item / company the ad is for when this happens?
• Are there any other error messages popping up after that one? If so, what does it say?

Let me know, and I can look deeper into this for you. 🎧

[dbronner]

No, I'm not trying to start premium.

The only ad was the announcement that I need to use premium to access music... which I'm confused about. Is Pandora Plus going away?

There are no displayed errors. The javascript console reports:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'urlParams' of undefined
at <anonymous>:31:26
at <anonymous>:37:7
at <anonymous>:39:3
at WriteStream._insertCursor (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._writeScriptToken (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._handleScriptToken (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._writeImpl (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream.write (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at runStream (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at nextStream (controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)

[TannerPandora]

Hi @dbronner!

Happy to help explain this. I've taken a look at your account and I see that your a Pandora Plus subscriber, however, you are triggering a complimentary session of Premium in order to listen to on-demand content, which is why you're seeing ads.

As a Plus subscriber you'll receive:

• All advertising removed
• Create radio stations and enjoy podcasts
• Higher quality audio
• Skip all you want
• Replay songs
• Listen offline with your Android or iOS phone

We've updated your experience so that you have the ability to listen to content on-demand, without being a Pandora Premium subscriber. 

If you search for and select the name of an artist, or track, or album, you should be brought to a "backstage page" where you can either create a radio station or press play.

If you press play you indicate that you'd like to listen to that content right away (or "on-demand"). Since only Pandora Premium subscribers can listen on-demand, you will either see an ad for Pandora Premium, or be prompted to watch a video ad to unlock a complimentary session of Pandora Premium.

Keep in mind that upgrading to Pandora Premium or accepting a complimentary session of Pandora Premium is completely optional; you can close the ad and we'll create a station for you to listen to instead (if one is available).

Hope that explains Premium Access Sessions. Let me know if you have any other questions about this. 

++

To address the issue of playback stopping:

Can you clarify some details for me. In your last post, you said that there was no advertisement, just the announcement of the Premium session. 

• Did Pandora just stop or appear to freeze?
• Did you have to refresh the page for Pandora to resume playback?
• To confirm, there was no advertisement that followed the Premium Session announcement?

Thanks for the help and your patience while we look into this. 

[dbronner]

I'm trying to play arbitrary songs from a previously-created station:

https://www.pandora.com/station/2290359476090217987

Is this what you mean by selecting tracks from a particular artist/album/whatever? If so, how do I play anything else?

• I guess Pandora is stopped/frozen. The play button is visible and the track timer isn't advancing. Clicking on play takes me to another song which is also stuck not playing (play button visible, timer not advancing).
• Pandora does not resume playback, on page reload or browser restart.
• Correct, there was no separate advertisement.

The javascript error I pasted above suggests pretty strongly that there's a problem in the code, though I don't know why I'm the only one affected.

[AdamPandora]

@dbronner That is correct - you won't actually be able to go back and play specific tracks with your Pandora Plus subscription unless you first watch an ad to initiate a Pandora Premium session.

This being said, we're happy to look into the issue you are having with Pandora not resuming playback.

Could you tell me a bit more about what is happening?

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?
  
1. Is there an error message? If so, what does it say?
   
2. Can you provide me with a screenshot/screen-recording of what you're seeing? 
   

Thanks for working with me on this. 🤝

[dbronner]

This is desktop linux (Ubuntu) running Chrome 84.0.4147.105.

As I said above, there is no displayed error message, but there's still a very likely looking javascript error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'urlParams' of undefined
at <anonymous>:31:26
at <anonymous>:37:7
at <anonymous>:39:3
at WriteStream._insertCursor (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._writeScriptToken (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._handleScriptToken (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream._writeImpl (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at WriteStream.write (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at runStream (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)
at nextStream (cdn.krxd.net/ctjs/controltag.js.e4cdf7ad64ebac73f207c1ce55cc1727:5)

[AlyssaPandora · Accepted solution]

@dbronner Thanks so much for providing those details. 

We do not officially support the use of Pandora on Linux clients. Unfortunately, there are far more Linux distributions and configurations than we have the capacity to test. However, Pandora is an HTML5 application, so it should work reasonably well on most up-to-date Linux desktop systems.

Another community member created a feature request that you may be interested in: Linux Client Application 

In the meantime, let's try out these steps on your Chrome web browser.

Feel free to keep us updated on whether this helps. 🎧

[jenjimenez3]

I'm having this issue too. I clicked some premium song by mistake and now my free playlists/songs won't play. The songs names keeps skipping when I hit play/pause. Please help. I"m on a desktop with Window OS 10 Enterprise

[AlyssaPandora]

Hi there, @jenjimenez3. 👋

How are you listening when this happens?

Are you using a web browser? If so, which one?

Or, are you using the Pandora Desktop App for Windows 10?

Let me know. 🎧

[jenjimenez3]

I've been using Firefox, not the app

[AlyssaPandora]

Thanks for getting back to me, @jenjimenez3.

I’ve enabled a trace on your Pandora 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 here: Firefox Troubleshooting

Let me know if this helps. 🎧

[joseph5]

every time i skip it doesn't skip and i have premium

[AdamPandora]

@joseph5 I'm showing the Pandora account connected to your Community profile is currently set up with the free service.

To clarify, are you currently paying for either a monthly or annual subscription to Pandora Premium?

Let me know.

[TylerTheMan]

I have the exact same thing. I am on chromebook, and it used to work fine, but now it just tells me something went wrong every time I watch an ad to listen to my music.

[AlyssaPandora]

Hey, @TylerTheMan. 👋

Sorry to hear that you're running into this issue after watching an ad. 

Which browser are you using when this happens?

Or, are you using the Pandora Desktop app?

Let me know, and I can report this over to our engineering team. 🎧

[TylerTheMan]

I was using google chrome, on the web version. Thank you

[AlyssaPandora]

Thanks for confirming, @TylerTheMan. I've gone ahead and shared this information with our engineering team on an internal ticket. We appreciate your patience while they investigate. 🎧