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Ideas: Lock for creating new stations on Alexa & Google

Ideas: Lock for creating new stations on Alexa & Google

m_alvare5
Underground
Status: Open Ideas

Hi everyone.  I'm super annoyed with Alexa creating a new station everytime it misunderstands what we requested.  It creates dozens of new stations every week and adds it to My Collection.  We need a way to prevent this behavior.  Maybe a lock mechanism where you need a three digit pin number to create a new station, that way Alexa or the kids won't create stations I don't want.

Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity

Labels (2)
155 Comments
tahlor
Local Performer

This is a proposed resolution to dealing with the surfeit of radio stations created by voice home assistants.

Situation: Maybe Alexa misheard you and instead of playing your carefully curated "Prelude in D Minor" radio station, it creates a new, inferior "Prelude in E Minor" radio station. Maybe your children inadvertently create new radio stations every time they demand Google Home to play "Let It Go." Maybe you can't think of an existing station, but you want a novel, temporary station based on "Old Town Road." But in all of these cases, you still want your assistant to play something right then, but you don't want tens or hundreds of naive radio stations based on a single track automatically cluttering your "My Collection."

My solution would be to add a "temporary" station list, i.e. a queue that keeps the last ~10 stations spontaneously created outside of the Pandora ecosystem. These would appear on the Pandora page similar to normal stations, just under a different heading.

The user then has to take some explicit action to immortalize the station in their collection (this could be a command to Alexa "Please save this Pandora station" or an option in the Pandora site/app). If no explicit save command is ever issued, the station gets bumped off the end of the queue as new stations are created.

This way you can still create stations, up-vote songs, see your track history etc. in the short term if you want to, without grossly contaminating your collection.

mpcgannon
Underground

When the echo doesn't understand me or when I request to play a song that Amazon doesn't offer, the echo auto creates a Pandora station to play. THIS IS UNDESIRABLE BEHAVIOR. The echo should ask: "Do you want me to create a station named <insert request here>?". I REALLY don't appreciate that this is done automatically without verification.

TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator
Status changed to: Open Ideas

Hi @mpcgannon! thanks for posting to Feature Request!

I moved your idea over to an existing thread: Lock for creating new stations (Alexa - Stop creating new stations please)

Thanks for the feedback! Please don't forget to vote ❤️The more votes an idea gets the more likely that it will be looked at Pandora's roadmap at some point. 

🎧

TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator
Status changed to: Open Ideas

Hi @tahlor! Thanks for posting!

Since your idea is related to an existing feature request, I added you on to Lock for creating new stations (Alexa - Stop creating new stations please).

Thanks for the feedback! I like the idea of temporary stations on platforms like Alexa and Google Home. 

Please don't forge to vote ❤️!

Fattage
Local Performer

I want alexa to preferably play existing stations when asked to play music instead of creating new stations from scratch with the same name and playing songs I've already thumbed down. It creates new stations nearly 50% of the time but it only needs to happen once to become annoying.

TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator
Status changed to: Open Ideas

Hi @Fattage! Thanks for posting your feedback. 

I merged your request with an existing request since its very similar to yours: Lock for creating new stations (Alexa - Stop creating new stations please)

Please don't forget to vote ❤️The more votes an idea gets the more likely that it will be looked at.

Thanks for being part of community!

 

m_alvare5
Underground

I've noticed some of the stations I created manually and spent time organizing and fine-tuning have disappeared; my only guess is there is a limit on the number of stations and this auto-creation of stations is pushing some stations out 😑.

Isn't it about time you change this behavior Pandora? The change/fix should be super easy.

I-
Local Performer

Same goes for Google Home... Stop automatically "adding" stations when my kids ask for a single song.

 

Simple setting would solve this:

Automatically create station when requesting song [Yes / No]

Or recode standard functionality such that, If a user requests a song, then selects to "thumbs up" that song, have Pandora prompt: Would you like to create a station? Or would you like to add song to existing station? Etc.

I-
Local Performer

Seems like this is a Pandora issue... Solved by a system setting:

"Automatically create New Station when requesting a song" [yes/no]

You will see a lot of No's ...in fact, "No" should be the default setting.

The same problem exists with both Google Home and Alexa.

icw24
Local Performer

This still needs to be implemented. It is obnoxious to have to delete each and every one