How to fix over emphasis on certain artists?

[HopAlong]

In my radio stations I have a few seed artists and also multiple thumbs up and down. On this station I favor 80's hair bands. But I have noticed that if I thumbs up a more recent artist -- say Disptach, a great band but not 80s hair band -- every other song offered in the feed is now Dispatch. I wait forever for a good old Iron Maiden or the Scorpions tune. I don't want to thumbs down a song I like, but I also don't want a single thumbs up to skew my feed away from the other 400+ 80s hair band songs I've thumbed up. Dispatch is fine, perhaps once in 200 songs. How do I fix this issue?

[AdamPandora]

@HopAlong Nice to see you around the Community. 

Pandora stations adapt with every song to try to find the right music for you. It does this by using a combination of the detailed information in the Music Genome Project, the station seeds and Thumbs feedback you have given along with feedback given by other listeners under similar conditions.

There are a number of variables that come into play when selecting the next song:

• The complete range of musical attributes for all of the songs we have by the artist you used to create the station. For example, for a station based on Brian Eno, you might hear rock songs and ambient music. You might try creating a station from one of the artist's songs instead (e.g. Lucky Star by Madonna). This should make the station much more specific.

• The type of feedback you've given on the station (all the Thumbs Up and Thumbs Down ratings) and any additional artist or song seeds you've added to the station. Pandora lumps all this together and tries to determine what the best musical match is based on our musical analysis.

To improve your stations, here are a couple of things to try:

1. Thumb down tracks that do not fit. This will prevent that song from playing again, and Pandora will learn more about what you don't want to hear. In your case, you may actually want to thumb down tracks by Dispatch if you don't want to hear their music on that particular station. Doing so won't actually prevent their tracks from playing on your other stations.
2. Make sure each of the thumbs-up you've given fits in with the type of station you are trying to create. If not, then remove that thumbs-up rating from the station page.
3. When listening from a computer, a mobile device or the Sonos app, you can access Pandora Modes to customize your station experience. You can pick different modes like Crowd Faves, Discovery and Deep Cuts.

If you need help editing your stations, let me know.

Of course, Pandora Premium subscribers can also create custom playlists in order to have complete control of what they hear on Pandora. If you want more information about that, let me know.

Thanks so much for listening!