Album Name in Place of Track Name

[Arc_Troope10]

Can someone explain why Pandora regularly displays the name of a track's album instead of displaying the name of the individual track?

The issue (assuming it's a bug and not a feature) occurs most often on my John Williams (Composer) station, which plays almost exclusively film soundtracks. Whether I'm using the Android app, the Windows desktop app, or listening on the web (Google Chrome), Pandora will almost always display the name of the soundtrack instead of the individual track. For example, if the last track in the soundtrack for Star Wars Episode VII comes on, Pandora will display "Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Film Score" as the track name instead of the track's actual name, which is "Jedi Steps and Finale," and the antepenultimate track from the soundtrack for the first Star Wars anthology film displays as "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Film Score" instead of that track's actual title, "Jyn Erso & Hope Suite." There are occasional exceptions to this rule, but even those exceptions don't seem to be consistent across entire albums.

The only platform that seems to (fairly) consistently get the track name correct is the Pandora skill for my Amazon Echo. Usually (but not always) if I ask it to say what's playing it will give me the track name instead of the album name.

This is not a recent development (In fact, it was only recently that Pandora started telling me any of the individual track names for these albums) but it's finally bugging me enough that I've decided to post here hoping someone has answers.

[AdamPandora]

@Arc_Troope10 Nice to see you around the community.

We have been unable to reproduce this on our end, so I would like to have one of our engineers look into this.

Can you please provide us with a screenshot of what you are seeing?

Thanks for the help with this!

[Arc_Troope10]

Sure thing. 

Here is an example of the issue occurring on Android 10. (The same issue happened on earlier versions of Android as well.) The first screenshot is from the Pandora app, the second is from the Shazam result for that track. The Shazam screenshot displays the correct title for that track on the album.

 

Here's another example from Android.

 

Here is an example of the issue occurring on Chrome. Again, the screenshot from Shazam shows the correct title for the track.

 

Here is a second example from Chrome. In this case Shazam didn't generate a title that appears on the standard soundtrack album, but I suspect that it just got confused by background noise and registered it as a similar or identical recording that can be found on another album.

  

Lastly, here's a smattering of other examples from Android. (Forgive me for not checking all of these on Shazam but I think you get the point and agree that these are probably not track titles.)

  

    

Again, this isn't a universal problem. Some albums, such as the soundtracks for Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest seem to consistently display the correct track name. (I stated in my original post that the occasional correct labeling wasn't consistent even within an individual album, but upon more deliberate examination I believe I was incorrect on that point.) That being said, this issue does affect the majority of tracks on my John Williams (Composer) station, which is probably the station I listen to the most.

[AdamPandora]

@Arc_Troope10 Thanks for sending that over.

I have escalated your feedback to our engineers so they can further investigate. 🔎

[Arc_Troope10]

Hey, @AdamPandora. It's been a little while so I thought I would bump this thread in case there's been any development. I also remembered a couple of other stations on which this problem tends to occur, shown below with the corresponding cover art for each station. I'm very curious about this problem, so I hope y'all will be able to tell me more about it at some point.

Terry Riley Radio

&

John Luther Adams Radio

[HappyTappy]

I'm a new member in the free trial for premium period. I'm getting this issue a lot on the Film Score Station. Here are some albums I've noticed it on:

- Batman Begins, Film Score

- American Beauty, Film Score

- Thor, Film Score

- Pearl Harbor, Film Score

- Shawshank Redemption. Film Score

Hope this can be resolved. A work around is pressing/clicking the 3 dot menu icon next to the album name and then you'll see the track name.

Thanks, like the app otherwise!

[Arc_Troope10]

↑Can confirm. I've had this issue with most (if not all) of those albums as well. I can also now confirm that the track names show up properly in the Pandora app for Amazon's FireTVStick (but that's not surprising since the track names register fine on my Amazon Echo).

Coincidentally I also recently started my trial of Premium and a may well end up sticking with it once the trial is over, but the Collection and Playlist functionalities would be a heck of a lot more useful if track names displayed consistently.

[AdamPandora]

@HappyTappy I have added your feedback to the ticket we have open with our engineering team.

Thanks for your patience as they continue to look into this!

[AdamPandora]

@Arc_Troope10 Thank you for providing us with this additional feedback.

I have checked in with our engineering team, and they are still looking into this issue.

Thanks again for your patience in the meantime as they work to find a fix. 🛠

[jbusnengo]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this issue or not, but I keep running into a weird issue with the titles of tracks on certain albums. When the songs are played in the Android or Windows apps, it shows the album name as the song name. When the songs are played on the Roku app or listed in the tracklists in the station description, the titles display properly. I've noticed this most frequently on my video game music station, specifically on the following soundtrack albums:

Mass Effect 3

Halo

Final Fantasy VIII

Halo 3

Halo 3 ODST

There isn't anything *I* can do to fix this, is there? Thanks!

-Joe

[AdamPandora]

@jbusnengo Would it be possible to send me separate screenshots of what you are seeing on Android/Web vs. what you see on Roku?

Thanks for working with me on this. 🤝

[jbusnengo]

I don't have the free time at the moment to wait for the same track to play
on all three players, but I managed to get different tracks from the same
album, all tracks of which show the issue.
In the thumbs-up lists, the circled track was the one that was playing
while the screenshots were being taken. I couldn't find a way to see the
thumbs up list on Roku.

[image: Windows - Thumbs Up.png]
[image: Windows - Player.png]
[image: Roku Player.jpg]
[image: Android Player.jpg]
[image: Android Thumbs Up.jpg]
-Joe

[jbusnengo]

Clearly, that didn't work. Let me try again.

OK, I can't seem to get the image imbedding to work, so here's a link to a Dropbox folder with the screenshots: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/n8dn8y0cjrbtzih/AACHTGvN_TnICyfgYxsSBTcna?dl=0

[AdamPandora]

@jbusnengo Unfortunately, I am unable to open that link.

To attach a screenshot, you will need to open this Community thread in a browser, and click on the camera icon located in the reply box: 

Thanks again for working with me on this. 🤝

[jbusnengo]

It didn't seem to work for me before, but now it's making a liar out of me. Here you go.

[AdamPandora]

Thanks for following up with these screenshots, @jbusnengo.

I have added your feedback to the ticket we have open with the engineers who are looking into this.

We appreciate your patience in the meantime!

[jbusnengo]

I discovered recently that the Android app shows the correct title while in offline mode, but not while online.

[AdamPandora]

Thanks for your additional feedback, @jbusnengo.

I'll make sure to update our engineering team with this information.

[SamTru09]

I have this same problem as well. Like everyone above it's specifically an issue with soundtracks. I mostly notice it with anything from Doctor Who.  What really confuses me though is when I click on the artist's name (Murray Gold in this case)  and it shows his top tracks they all have the titles shown.  Honestly Pandora is my preferred music app but this is a huge pet peeve.

 Here's an example from a few minutes ago.  The actual song title is "Martha Triumphant" and if I click on Murray Gold and go to the list of his top songs it will be in there labeled correctly. 

 

[AdamPandora]

@SamTru09 I've escalated your feedback over to our engineering team so they can further investigate.

Thanks for your patience in the meantime!