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Shuffle plays familiar bands

davidjharris123
Opening Act

I have edited my below post to be more tactful.

The new format and changes brought on by Sirius's ownership of Pandora are frustrating to say the least.  Up until recently, Pandora was a great discovery tool.  I could flip on my Shuffle of stations and hear bands/songs I've never heard before.  Now, all Shuffle plays nothing but familiar bands with thumbs up songs repeating too frequently.  Since adding the deep cuts / discovery feature to individual stations, the Shuffle feature has become effectively useless for people who like to discover new bands and songs, as it seems to default to the "Crowd Favs" format with no way to change it..   A work-around, and an extreme pain in the butt, would be to add all my song seeds and artist seeds to one station, then turn on deep cuts. Or simply listen to one station at a time.

Hopefully, this feature will get fixed soon.  I'm sure many users use Shuffle rather than listening to individual stations; and they would prefer the extra variety.

 

Moderator edit: edited title for clarity

6 Replies

davidjharris123
Opening Act
I have gone through, deleted a bunch of thumbs up and manually turned on "Discovery" for all stations. While deleting thumbs up has helped Shuffle sound a bit better, Discovery only works when listening to individual stations on the phone or web browser. I'm still seeing a lot less variety than before the format changes were implemented. Hopefully, Discovery and Deep Cuts will be added to Shuffle soon.

AlyssaPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hey, @davidjharris123. 👋

Thanks so much for your post. I'm glad you wrote about this, and I completely understand where you're coming from.

It sounds like you may have already checked out these helpful tips to improve your stations. 🎶

I did some digging and I was able to locate an existing feature request about using modes with shuffle. To express your interest in seeing this idea implemented, click on the ❤️icon located next to the title of the suggestion on the main Feature Request page.

Please keep in mind, input from our listeners is always welcomed. If you have an ideas you'd like to share with the community to improve Pandora overall, feel free to create your own feature request here

Hope to see you around the community often. 🎧

Alyssa | Community Manager
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davidjharris123
Opening Act

This new format is horrible. I haven't heard a new artist worth listening to in over 5 months. It's just the same bands over and over and over and over again. What happened?

AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@davidjharris123 Sorry to hear our shuffle feature still isn't working the way you'd like. I do have some additional suggestions that may help:
 
1. Create a custom shuffle mix. If you haven't already, try making a custom shuffle. You can include any station you'd like, and this set of stations will be saved as My Shuffle (or QuickMix) on all your devices. Let us know if you'd like the steps for that. 

You'll then be able to check the boxes next to the stations that you want to include in your custom shuffle, and this set of stations will be saved as My Shuffle (or QuickMix) on all your devices.

2. Avoid including several stations based on similar artists or songs. Choosing several stations of a similar style will create a repetitive shuffle mix. When selecting stations for shuffle (or when creating any new stations in general) consider selecting artists or tracks that musically contrast. This will yield a broader playlist.

3. Put tracks on the shelf. If you get sick of a track but don't want to completely ban it, you can put it on the shelf for a while by selecting I'm tired of this track/song.

Hopefully, these steps will help your shuffle play more of the music you love. Let me know if you'd like me to send over steps to edit stations on your device.

Thanks for being a part of the community! 

davidjharris123
Opening Act

Adam, the problem is Shuffle will only exclusively play songs from artists that are already in my artist and song seeds on my stations. It no longer introduces you to other artists of similar style.   

I have gone through all 100 or so of my stations, deleted a bunch of thumbs up and changed the artist and song seeds on all of them - a daunting and tedious task.  However, no matter how much I change my seeds or turn stations on and off in the custom shuffle feature, the new format is still just plays artists added as seeds.  There is no longer any variety.  The only solution is to listen to an individual station and turn on discovery.  The problem is I don't want to just discover artists on a single station, I want to discover artists on all stations.

davidjharris123
Opening Act

I was never really able to find a solution to this problem. Even using the Deep Cuts and Discovery settings on Pandora resulted in many repeats of the same bands over and over. For now, I've tried a free streaming service called Jango, which seems to have a really awesome algorithm for music discovery (including in Shuffle mode). It also allows for high quality streaming without having to subscribe. The downside is that it doesn't have the expansive music library that Pandora does. Thus far, I haven't been able to find any service that matches Pandora's extensive music library.

I hope that one day Pandora's music selection algorithm can be corrected (back to how it used to be) so that one can discover great music.

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