Get the most variety possible?

[Thortok2000]

I've been a long time subscriber of Pandora. For me I started with LAUNCHcast (if anyone ever heard of that), which became yahoo radio, which then ended, and that's when I switched to Pandora and I haven't used anything else since and I've always had the top plan available. So I'm an extremely loyal customer.

But I am definitely frustrated with one thing....repetition. Over the years I have like over 1000 songs thumbed up by now. And yet I'll hear the same song twice in one day. This is unacceptable to me. Out of so many songs to choose from that I've already said I liked, not to mention countless more that could be recommended but I haven't thumbed them up yet, a 100-song shuffle is just not enough, especially for my listening habits. (In 2019 I have nearly 60k minutes listened. I listen while I drive. I listen while I work. That's a lot of time.)

I want something simple: I want it all.

I basically want to hear every song I've ever liked, and every recommended song, ever, in one huge mix. And I absolutely want new music to be mixed in over time, particularly the latest hits.

I've tried various ways to get this to work and have come close but no cigar. I seem to be either stuck with one or the other (either it plays only what I like, or it tries to come up with some new songs I might like but then gets stuck on the same 100 songs and never changes). I have tried shuffling all my stations, but they're capped at like 100 songs each and are still super repetitive.

I used to use the "I'm tired of this song" function but I can't find it anymore. And plus, whenever I used it, it didn't seem any different from thumbing it down...even though I liked the song, I never heard it again, months or years later. Seriously, there's some songs that I haven't heard come up on the rotation in years. Possibly even close to a decade, now. And yet other songs will play two, three times a day. Come on!

My thumbprint radio seems stuck on the last 100 songs I thumbed up instead of the full 1000 I've thumbed. My Thumbprint playlist of course absolutely refuses to play any recommendations and only plays the music I've thumbed and I never hear anything new. (And I also can't hear any station-required songs.)

Playlists also seem to play the explicit version of songs that I thumbed up a clean version of. So that's frustrating.

I just now found something about being able to shuffle songs in your collection...but I haven't built a collection of songs, only thumbs ups, since I listen to stations much more often than playlists, and thumb things up rather than "add to collection."

I can't find any way to import or transfer my thumbs up list into a "collection" of songs. There's a thousand songs in that list. I don't want to "add to my collection" one by one.

I can't find a "add all songs to my collection" function in the playlists either, unless I'm blind. And even if I did this, I'd probably get stuck on the same thing as the thumbs up playlist anyway; station songs won't play, explicit lyrics will, and nothing new ever shows up, ever.

I also can't seem to shuffle playlists together. For instance if I could shuffle "thumbprint" and "the drop" together then that could work (except for the missing radio songs and forced explicit lyric versions)...but it will only 'queue' the lists, not shuffle them together.

The "when list is done, play songs like it" function would be good....if my thumbprint list wasn't 1000 songs long so I have to listen to every song I've ever thumbed up before it decides to start playing anything new. (Most of the time the app updates and starts over long before that happens.) And "the drop" playlist doesn't seem to want to do this "songs like it" feature.

Right now my solution is to use 'thumbprint radio' and just be super heavy on the skip button. I wind up skipping like 10, 20 songs in a row sometimes, just to get to something I haven't thumbed up yet, and often it's a song I've heard many times and just haven't gotten around to thumbing it up yet. x.x The lack of the "I'm tired of this song" function is frustrating, and I don't want to thumb anything down and never hear it again. x.x

I don't want to mess with the app every time I get tired of hearing the same stuff over and over. I just want to hit 'play'. I want a one-button experience. That's it. If I occasionally hear a really great song I'll thumb it up or if I hear something I never want to hear again I'll thumb it down. That's how I want to enjoy my music. ALL of it. Every song there ever was or will be. Is that really too much to ask?

I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out how to configure this to get what I want...all my music, all the time, and not just some small slice of it over and over. Argh! Help!

Yay, thanks for bringing my post back. Sorry I went a little nuts with the formatting, I was bored and trying out the editor. XD

Also, I underestimated some of my stats. According to my profile here, I've been subscribed since 3/3/2009, have 5321 thumbs, and 1941 music hours.

Honestly that just makes me more frustrated that I can't find the right way to maximize my variety. =( Any help, now that my post is back?

mod edit: format

[AdamPandora · Accepted solution]

@Thortok2000 You've touched on a few topics here, so I want to make sure I answer all of your questions.

General station repetition:

It's true there can be a certain amount of repetition in some stations. Each listener has different tastes when it comes to hearing the familiar versus discovering new songs. Finding the right balance for each individual is something we continue to work on.

I recommend checking out this thread for more information on how you can improve your stations. 

Thumbprint Radio repetition:

I recommend checking out this existing thread for more information on how to help with repetition you are hearing on Thumbprint Radio. 

Playlists play explicit versions instead of clean:

The explicit filter will only apply to songs that play on your stations; it doesn't apply to playlists you create, or those created for you by Pandora. Also, It doesn't apply to podcasts.

When you're curating playlists or searching for podcasts, you can identify explicit tracks by a red "E" label. To keep explicit songs or podcasts from your collection, avoid adding those with that label.

Adding songs from your My Thumbs Up playlist to shuffle:

While there isn't an "add all" or "collect all" button on the website or app, that isn't actually necessary if all you want to do is shuffle that playlist.

When opening your My Thumbs Up playlist on your mobile device, you should see an option for Shuffle located in the middle of the screen (above the song at the top of the list).

When opening your My Thumbs up playlist on a computer, you should see the shuffle icon located next to the Play button on the left side of the screen.

Clicking on that icon will shuffle all of your tracks on that playlist.

More general shuffle options:

While there isn't currently a way to customize your shuffle selections to include both stations and playlists, the best way to get your ideas heard is by creating a post for it in our Feature Requests space. 

I'm sure that is a feature many other listeners would be interested in having as well. 

Hope this was helpful. Thanks for being a part of the community! 🎶

[vanZylin]

THOR,

SORRY FOR YELLING, but YES, YES, YES, YES - the repetition is Driving me Crazy.  Enough to start exploring other options.  I don't think I go back to 2009, but 2012 - so long time Pandora user.

For me, I have my super station which contains over 170 artists.  There total songs have to be greater 10,000, yet it's the same 40 to 100 songs over and over again.  I listen at work, so streaming 8 hours a day.  I don't listen to broad cast radio stations because they play less than the same 40 songs over and over again.

I would like some new songs to come along and / or artists that are not in my list, but close.

I literally should never hear the same song in 3 or 4 days.

My solution would be to have a choice 1) top songs 2) little variety 3) variety 4) large variety and 5) massive variety.  Use this variable to set the repeat cycle or some other algorithm to calculate how many songs or artists are presented in a week or month. 

When I lived in SF, the local station KFOG once a year would play the top 1,000 songs.  It would take over a week to get through the list.  Favorite listening week of the year.

One of the things I found is that by not liking any songs it allowed for a bit more variety.

Maybe another option is to rotate through albums if you've selected an artist.  That way you'd get to hear the obscure songs as well as the hits.

With so many songs in the world, why should we be limited to listening to just 100.

Regards,

Steve

[kendenny]

I've been listening to my Little Feat station in discovery mode for a few hours now and I just heard "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" by Warren Zevon for the second time today.