Selecting Offline Stations with Pandora Plus

[Mfitz]

I just signed up for pandora plus. Is there a way for me to select which stations i can listen to offline? It automatically selected 4 stations but the station that i really listen to was not one of the stations.

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

[aviemet]

Wow, really disappointing. I understand limiting the number of offline stations for plus members, but not allowing us to manage what's downloaded on our personal devices is just rude. Limit me to 3 but let me choose what gets downloaded.

I have 2 service outages on my commute to work. I'm really rather tired of my most listened to stations, but that's what comes on when I lose connection. The suggestion to play my preferred station is really stupid because in order to do this, I'll be playing with my phone on silent, all night, all day at work. What a stupid game to force your users to play for what should be a simple feature. This is the kind of thing that sours your customer base against you. 

[twist]

Not allowing us to pick which stations are available Offline is beyond disgusting. This needs fixed, and no "pay twice as much!" isn't a solution.

[teresaneighbors]

Why can't I change my offline music? I didn't realize it was limited to 3 stations. Now im stuck with one gene of music. 

[debmar0911]

This answers my question. I listen mostly to Smooth Jazz, and that is the station that comes up when I am offline.  😊

[Legit2]

I deleted one of my 3 stations, and it wasn’t replaced by a different download.  Any explanation?  

Really annoying that we cannot control what is downloaded, not even by deleting our favorite stations.  And I’m on a paid plan.

[MariaPandora]

Hi @Legit2, I moved your  post to another thread more in line to your question: Selecting Offline Stations with Pandora Plus.

First let me explain a bit more of how Offline Listening Works:

Offline Listening is available to Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium subscribers. When you lose your mobile connection, Pandora will alert you with a notification to let you know that we are switching you to one of your offline stations. This way you stay connected to your music without major interruptions.

• For Pandora Plus subscribers, we will automatically choose up to three of your most-listened-to stations along with Thumbprint Radio* and add them to your offline listening stations.
• Pandora Premium subscribers, on the other hand, can choose which additional stations, albums, songs, or playlists are downloaded.
• Both Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium listeners can also switch to Offline Listening at any time, so you can save your data and take the music you love wherever you go.
• Pandora will never use the last 500MB of storage, so we will only download as much content as we can before we hit that limit.

Now, the account that is linked to your community profile doesn't seem to be upgraded, however, if you have another account it sounds like that account is on Pandora Plus.

At this time, Pandora Plus listeners cannot add, delete or swap out which stations will be available for offline listening. We know this is a feature a lot of our listeners would enjoy, and there's an existing suggestion for this here: Choose your own Offline stations with Pandora Plus 

• To upvote an idea, please click on the ❤️  icon next to the title of the request. Upvoting and leaving comments gives you the opportunity to express your interest in seeing a request implemented.
• For more details about how feature requests work in the Pandora Community, I encourage you to check out our Ideas Policy & FAQs

In the meantime, if you're wanting to have other offline stations available to you (with Pandora Plus), try listening to those other stations more (ones that are currently not on your Offline station list). Since we periodically refresh the stations that are available to you offline (based on your listening habits), we may surprise you with adding them to your list.

Hope this helps explain.

[code3taylor]

I have upgraded to premium and I now download all my stations to offline so
I have all my stations with me… thank you..

[DropDedZedOG]

hi ive been a long time pandora user and had premium for like a decade. when they changed the prices recently i had to go with the cheaper package. it only allows me three stations in offline mode but i cant change the stations it gave me. is there a way to change the three out at least once for stations i listen to more often? also that price switch was dirty ive used pandora for over a decade and paid for premium almost never missing a payment. should of grandfathered long time subscribers with the same package weve been loyal to since the beginning. still to stubborn to switch got years of thumbed up songs here

[AdamPandora]

@DropDedZedOG I moved your post over to this existing thread: Selecting Offline Stations with Pandora Plus

At this time, Pandora Plus listeners cannot add, delete or swap out which stations will be available for offline listening. 

Check out the accepted solution for more information.

Hope this helps!

[RodAuric]

Adam - I see you have been responding to this concern for at least 4 years. You must be getting tired of hearing from users about this having to say "At this time Plus listeners cannot ...." When will be the time? You are maybe even more frustrated with your dev team (or marketing team!) not coming up with an acceptable solution to this. I feel ya. If it isn't clear, I am also frustrated that we don't have the chance to modify the downloaded stations for offline mode.

Let me try to give you some ammunition to discuss this with the powers that be.

Your marketing material for Plus tier can easily be misinterpreted. Knowing now what you actually offer for Plus tier there is nothing "wrong" per se with the words used but they are easily misinterpreted. Think about it this way. If you said, "For Plus subscribers, we automatically choose up to three of your most-listened-to stations since you first created your Pandora account, perhaps stations listened to decades ago and never since, (along with Thumbprint Radio) as your only offline listening stations. And you don't get to change which stations we chose." Do you think many people considering Plus tier would find that attractive? First it accurately sets expectations which in some small way is a positive, but overwhelmingly this is off putting. No wonder it isn't stated clearly up front (and I don't mean in fine print). If marketing knows better than to state the reality, then it should know better than to create this limitation in the first place. It feels like bait and switch, because it is. This is detrimental to the Pandora brand.

Please study why your users listen to music. I would suggest there are at least two broad catagories. One is we listen to music as the backgroud to our lives. Think soft rock music. Think Christmas music. Think soft jazz. The other is we listen to specific artists, genres, or eras of music to suit our mood at the time. If the algorythm is to select "most listened to stations" then you are going to mostly select music from the background music category. I got Plus over the Christmas holidays when I had been listening to a lot of a Christmas station and low and behold, I now have that Christmas music station as one of my downloaded offline stations! What am I supposed to do for the rest of the year? 

The solution to upgrade to Premium is disingenuous. If I wanted to pay for Premium in the first place then I would have. 

I could go on, but I've given you (Pandora) enough free marketing advice. 

NOW IS THE TIME to revisit this. Get your Dev team and Marketing team together and put some honest effort into making this work better. 

I like Pandora and I've resisted the advice of others in my sphere who have encouraged me to move to Spotify. Throw me (and all the other Plus listeners who find this situation absurd) a bone here!

[RodAuric]

Pandora moderators have been responding to this concern for at least 4 years. You all must be getting tired of hearing from users about this having to say "At this time Plus listeners cannot ...." When will be the time? You are maybe even more frustrated with your dev team (or marketing team!) not coming up with an acceptable solution to this. I feel ya. If it isn't clear, I am also frustrated that we don't have the chance to modify the downloaded stations for offline mode.

Let me try to give you some ammunition to discuss this with the powers that be.

Your marketing material for Plus tier can easily be misinterpreted. Knowing now what you actually offer for Plus tier there is nothing "wrong" per se with the words used but they are easily misinterpreted. Think about it this way. If you said, "For Plus subscribers, we automatically choose up to three of your most-listened-to stations since you first created your Pandora account, perhaps stations listened to decades ago and never since, (along with Thumbprint Radio) as your only offline listening stations. And you don't get to change which stations we chose." Do you think many people considering Plus tier would find that attractive? First it accurately sets expectations which in some small way is a positive, but overwhelmingly this is off putting. No wonder it isn't stated clearly up front (and I don't mean in fine print). If marketing knows better than to state the reality, then it should know better than to create this limitation in the first place. It feels like bait and switch, because it is. This is detrimental to the Pandora brand.

Please study why your users listen to music. I would suggest there are at least two broad catagories. One is we listen to music as the backgroud to our lives. Think soft rock music. Think Christmas music. Think soft jazz. The other is we listen to specific artists, genres, or eras of music to suit our mood at the time. If the algorythm is to select "most listened to stations" then you are going to mostly select music from the background music category. I got Plus over the Christmas holidays when I had been listening to a lot of a Christmas station and low and behold, I now have that Christmas music station as one of my downloaded offline stations! What am I supposed to do for the rest of the year? 

The solution to upgrade to Premium is disingenuous. If I wanted to pay for Premium in the first place then I would have. 

I could go on, but I've given you (Pandora) enough free marketing advice. 

NOW IS THE TIME to revisit this. Get your Dev team and Marketing team together and put some honest effort into making this work better. 

I like Pandora and I've resisted the advice of others in my sphere who have encouraged me to move to Spotify. Throw me (and all the other Plus listeners who find this situation absurd) a bone here!