Shuffle only cycles through 5 stations at a time

[Saavedro88]

Shuffle Mode only plays 5 different artists

This has happened to me on two different devices so far this morning. When my alarm went off on my phone this morning (which is set to Shuffle all stations), it only cycled between Drive-By Truckers, Anderson Paak, Beck, Middle Kids and Wolfmother.

Now that I'm at work, I'm listening on my PC, and it's only giving me The Fratellis, Paramore, Copeland, Mates of State and Blink-182. 

I'm paying for a Premium subscription, I should definitely be getting more variety than this. Has anyone else encountered this issue before? Do I need to reset something?

I've been running into a lot of different, very frustrating issues with Pandora recently, I'm honestly beginning to question whether or not it's still worth it. 

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

[pshift2]

Update for today, with some interesting information:
I kept track of each of my stations as they played today. A total of 30 stations were shuffled thru, and then it cycled back and ran thru the exact same 30, in the exact same order.

The first five stations were Raconteurs, Rolling Stones, ABBA, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and Halloween Party.

After playing thru all 30 again, and starting over with Raconteurs and Rolling Stones again, I decided to remove ABBA from the list to see what would happen.

Interestingly, even though ABBA no longer had the blue checkmark - it STILL played a song from the ABBA station. While the ABBA song was playing, I also removed Toad the Wet Sprockets checkmark... and yet, the next song was from that station.

However! AFTER that, the next 3 stations were all ones that had not played previously. (It's nearing the end of the day, so I'm unable to continue playing songs in order to see what would happen next.)

Don't know if any of this info is helpful to any of the Pandora employees who are working on this, but sharing it anyway...

[AdamPandora]

Pandora Update 04/14/21:

Hey everyone! 👋🏽

Our engineering has made some changes on their end which should have things back and up and running as they normally were.

If you continue to run into issues with the same 5-20 stations cycling through Shuffle Mode during the same listening session, please reply back to this thread and let us know.

Thanks for being a part of the Community!

[Saavedro88]

Great news! When should we start to see this update roll out? 

[AdamPandora]

@Saavedro88 This should have been rolled out already.

If you have a chance, try shuffling your stations again, and definitely let me know if you continue to run into the issue with the same 20 stations getting stuck when shuffling.

[eVarese]

thanks for the update, @AdamPandora. i've been listening most of the day and have not noticed any repeated stations. all seems to be back to the way it was before one of the engineers spilled his/her mustard sauce on the code a few weeks back. good stuff! thanks! and @pshift2 that was a super account of your shuffle misfiring. thanks for keeping that detailed log! 🙂 seeyall around the www.... keep on jammin' your fave music! i'm currently rocking this pretty weird (newish) rock band on one of my shuffles from Atlanta called Red Sea  https://pandora.app.link/Tfls3ksgsfb thanks to Pandora for making such a great tool for that. I'll revisit my idea for multiple custom shuffles in a new thread somewhere soon. peace, y'all!

[Saavedro88]

Thanks for the tip, my phone actually ended up doing an update yesterday afternoon, the restart seems to have helped to get the shuffle back to perfectly normal. 

Thank you for all your help and patience, @AdamPandora ! 

[pshift2]

It seemed like yesterday was a vast improvment. Today has been decent, but I'm fairly certain that it is doing the "picks 30 of my stations at random, and goes through them in order" thing I described the other day. (I haven't had the time or patience to keep track like I did earlier, so I can't prove it, but I have 200+ stations, so the chances of the same one coming up during the day should be minimal, and I know for a fact that Golden Smog station has popped up twice already.)

[Saavedro88]

Yeah, I gotta say, I've been hearing an awful lot of a few bands in particular today. Like way more than I normally would. I haven't actually been keeping track because I've been very busy today, but when I started typing this message, Kodaline was playing for AT LEAST the 5th time today, and as I'm typing right now Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" is playing for the third time today. 

[pshift2]

Hopefully this won't jinx it, but so far so good today. Been keeping track of my stations all day - currently up to 34, with no repeats. 👍

[Saavedro88]

I was LITERALLY just about to come here to say that I just heard Indica Badu for the second time today. 😓 I haven't been able to keep track today but I haven't felt like we're reaching our full potential yet...

[pshift2]

HMmm. Seems like I *did* speak too soon. 50 stations, and we've cycled back to the first two that I listened to. (70s Rock, and Grandson.) I can pretty safely predict that the next station that will play will be Joe Jackson.

[pshift2]

YEP.

I mean, I feel like I'm whining a bit - it's not like they're repeating the SONGS, it's just the stations. And, 50 different stations is an improvement over 5 or 10 or 30... It's just, for years everything was fine with the shuffle feature. I don't know what changed, but I liked it better the old way.

[Saavedro88]

Agreed man. It all really started going downhill for me when stations based on artists would never actually ever play that artist, maybe around last fall? Beginning of Winter? And it's been nothing but other dumb issues for me ever since. 

Now, I'm hearing songs be repeated more than I ever have before. It's certainly tiresome. I used to be dedicated to Pandora, I used to love that I could count on hearing something that I had never heard before, but that hasn't happened in a very long time...

[asuss06]

Hi. Im the guy who started this thread.  im happy to say that my problem is completely fixed as of Weds or Thursday.  Thank you very much and hope everyone elses similar issues are fixed as well.

[Saavedro88]

Is anyone else still having problems? It still seems like I keep hearing the same songs and stations every day. I don't know how picky I'm allowed to be anymore though. I just want things to be the way they were. 

[Saavedro88]

I see the thread has been marked as Solved, does that mean no one is even looking at it anymore? @AdamPandora 

[AdamPandora]

@Saavedro88 Are you still only getting the same 5-20 stations repeating in Shuffle Mode in the same exact order?

Let me know.

[Saavedro88]

The number has gone up to 50, just like @pshift2 has been saying. 

[AdamPandora]

@Saavedro88 @pshift2 Thank you for voicing your additional feedback.

I have reported this to the engineers who were working on this issue so they can further investigate.

Thanks again for all. your patience with this. 🤝

[Teamskoal8]

@AdamPandora I am still having the same issue. The staycations are shuffling but definitely not going though my entire playlist as it used to. I’m not so much getting repeated songs just stations. This is getting very frustrating as I am a paying customer. I have probably 50-60 stations and I know I haven’t heard some at all when I shuffle and I usually have it playing for 8 hours on a work day. Also lately it doesn’t even seem like it changes stations and repeats the same ones in shuffle mode each day. Please tell me this is going to be fixed soon or I may have to look into other streaming services as I have not been happy with this as long as this problem has been going on.