Not hearing newer releases on stations

[Valis678]

All of my stations typically refuse to ever update with newer music. For example if i play “emarosa radio” it will not play any music from the last 3 albums even after skipping through 40 songs. If i login to a pc and play “emarosa radio” there is a mode that lets me select “new releases” but this is not a fix. Clearly we all want to play our favorite radio stations and hear a blend of the artists music and not just the music that artist had the first time we listened to that radio station 6 years ago. One more example, two years ago i had pandora play “doja cat radio” , if i ask pandora to play that station right now it will not play any of the music from the new album.

[AdamPandora]

@Valis678 Thank you for your feedback around your stations not playing newly released music.

I understand that it's frustrating not to hear newer tracks on your stations, but there's no way to control when or how often particular songs will play. Because of our licenses, we have to limit the predictability of a certain song or artist from playing on those services.

That said, I do see you are currently upgraded to Pandora Premium.

With this level of subscription, you do have the ability to stream content on-demand (such as newer releases that are put on Pandora by specific artists), as well as create new playlists where you can pick and choose what songs you actually want to hear.

I recommend taking advantage of those features since you are upgraded to Pandora Premium - this will likely improve your listening sessions, as you'll be able to manually select the music you want to hear at the time.

Hope this helps!

[Valis678]

I don’t think “newer” is the right word. When a radio station doesnt play any music from 3 albums aka 6 years aka half the artists music its a programming issue. The stations are getting locked in to the artists music once the radio station is created. If i for example have pandora play “halsey” radio for the first time and thumbs up/down numerous songs then when halsey releases a new album in 6 months it will not play on that radio station. Here is another example. My favorite station is post malone radio. I asked pandora to play it the first time 3 years ago. If i ask it to play right now it will play the same 50-100 songs it played 3 years ago. This has got to be fixed. Manually creating playlists everytime new music comes out is a nightmare. I want to walk in to my house and say “alexa play eminem radio on pandora” and reasonably expect pandora to play all of the artists music and related artists music from all time in a reasonable fashion.

[AdamPandora]

@Valis678 Thanks for following up.

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.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do to improve your stations:

1. Listen using Pandora Modes: When listening from a computer, 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.
2. Put tracks on the shelf: If you get sick of a track but don't want to give it a Thumbs Down, you can put it on the shelf for a while. To do this from the web, hover your mouse over the album art and select "I'm tired of this track." Pandora Premium listeners should click the ellipsis (3 dots) next the album art to see that option.
3. Edit your station: In some cases, it might actually help to remove Thumbs Up ratings in the station to mix things up.
4. Add Variety: To add more variety to your artist or song based stations, you can select additional artist and/or song seeds. You can Add Variety when editing stations.

Running through these steps should increase the variety of the station pretty quickly.

Hope this helps!

[Valis678]

Yes im very familiar with all of that but im not looking to create a new station manually or even tweak the existing ones. I just want them to work like they should. Look at my account and play emarosa radio, no matter how many times you skip it will not play any music from the last three albums which are also much more popular so its not a user preference thing. I also understand that if you ask pandora to play, for example, “journey radio” that you will hear the top 8 songs much, much more then any of the other music, however you would not expect to only hear 10 songs from one album. When new music is released there needs to be better programming to update subscribers stations and not leave them 100% old and stagnate. Asking customers to login to a computer to manually make minute changes and add new artists is also not a reasonable expectation. Can you answer why new albums/hits/singles dont show up in existing stations?

[deally-stan]

For me, Pandora is all about discovering new-to-me music. The algorithm that the company started with would analyze music along musical axes, which was innovative and unique.

If the algorithm is re-run every time you open the app, it SHOULD show newer music that sounds like the songs you seeded the station with. That doesn't happen today. Stations get stale and the songs in their rotation never seem to change.

My guesses are that 

1. the algorithm is only run when you seed a song
2. the algorithm uses non-musical criteria, such as the era of the music, to only include songs from the same era-- never anything new
3. the algorithm is too strict, so it won't match songs with similar structure and progressions if the instruments (or some other trait) vary too much across musical eras
4. Pandora doesn't have the clout to license newer music or to expand its catalog

I used to be a Premium subscriber, but I dropped it when I moved overseas (Pandora is US only). Now I'm back in the USA and I'd love to get back on Pandora, but I'm finding the stations I made before are pretty stale and repetitive.

I'll try some of those "modes" suggested above. Though I'm using an ancient iPhone to serve music and I'm pretty sure the modes aren't in its UI.

Anyway. Thanks for listening!