Ideas: Instrumental tracks only setting

[stevelustig]

I request that there be a setting switch to indicate that a station should play only instrumental tracks, in other words do not play tracks with vocals.

I do a lot of writing and can really cruise to instrumental music- vocals interfere with my concentrating on my own "inner voice". I have a half dozen different genre stations in which I've systematically given "thumbs down" to each vocal track. Still Pandora is delivering vocal tracks in these stations. Apparently it is not actually possible to train Pandora's stations very well, so we need a force setting to help.

Conversely just to be fair, there could be another switch to play only vocal tracks for others.

Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity

[HoliusCrapus]

I'd love this feature too!

I have a station like this... It just took a lot of curating.

[TannerPandora]

Thanks for the great feedback @stevelustig! I love instrumentals too. 

Don't forget to ❤️, the more votes an idea gets the more likely that it will be looked at for our roadmap. 

Thanks for being part of community! 

[Andreuz-Music]

Ditto this post and comments!

[wisepeppy]

In my experience, it didn't take much thumbing of tracks for Pandora to pick up on the fact that a particular station was intended to be instrumental songs only, and then to only play instrumental tracks.  I only have two such stations, but I'm disappointed to hear that's not a consistent experience for others.  If thumbing doesn't consistently work, I agree there should be a means of specifying this, but it begs the question, what other song-characteristics should be allowed to be turned on or off for a station?  I think this touches on some other FR's I've seen for adding the ability to manually adjust all the criteria that selects songs for a station - i.e. all the 'music genome' characteristics, like "heavy vamping", and "male vocal aesthetic" and whatnot.  I envision a slider for each where you can weight each aspect more or less heavily, and maybe others are just an on/off switch, like whether or not it's instrumental-only.

[edit] I've been listening to my "Rock Instrumental" station most of the day today, and I think I've had to thumb-down more lyric-containing songs than instrumentals I've actually listened to... it seems the thumbing algorithm isn't as good as it used to be at picking up on a desire for instrumental tracks. Today, I really want a selector for choosing instrumental-only tracks on a station.  ...aaaaand another lyrical song just started playing as I'm typing this...[/edit]

[MOHLovesAlaska]

I have created my own personal playlist just for reading. But my reading playlist has music with lyrics, softer but with lyrics. My playlist also has only instrumental music on it as well. But I do agree with you about the option to have. If you noticed I gave you a liking(vote). Well take care and be safe.

[MusicIsForever]

I totally agree. I often make bands' seeds because I haven't heard them before and want to listen. When it comes to rock these days, apparently almost all of the children scream. Sometimes, I want to hear bands that don't scream and I was recommended to enter specific tracks, but many times I have no clue what I'm getting into when I check out an artist. Track what? I don't know it yet.

I feel like rock is dying, and I'm looking for good new bands that don't scream. It seems like there should be a way to correct Pandora if they misunderstand your taste.  I almost always hate screaming, and I'm told that there is no button I can press to stop or even toggle it.  I think any parent can sympathize with that if they have raised a baby.

It would be nice to be able to enter no screaming vocals or as in your case, no vocals at all. I feel like Pandora should work with me in taste, and that means being able to tell them what I like in addition to Pandora taking into account what they think I like.

[Seph]

I have this same feature request but written from a programmers perspective based off my knowledge of how the Pandora music system works:

https://community.pandora.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Create-playlist-based-off-selecting-qualities-genr...

We should be able to select any qualities at all, that's what choosing a song does.. so why not just skip the "choose a song" part and let us be specific?

[JimTheFrog]

I agree with wisepeppy that it just takes a little training. I have created several stations that I seeded with instrumental-only tracks. After thumbing down just a few tracks with vocals, I now only hear instrumental tracks on those stations. It would be nice to have a feature to request this in the first place, but until then the workaround is relatively simple.

[Simon]

I use some stations to concentrate or for example while I’m reading so it would be great to limit the song suggestions for some stations to „without vocals“!

[AdamPandora]

@Simon I moved your post to this thread since you have a similar request: Instrumental tracks only

Make sure to upvote this feature request with a ❤️to express your interest in getting it added to the service as well.

Hope we continue to see you around the Community! 😎