Station Repetition

[GGirl]

Altho I have faithfully followed the instructions to add variety/new artists to my station, I never hear them. I seem to hear the same 20 or so songs over and over. How do I fix this? As best I can tell this isn't a genre station and the "add variety" button isn't greyed out.

[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?

[karalivbus]

I keep a spreadsheet. I know it seems crazy but this way I can control how many times the same song plays. I list the song, artist & station on the spreadsheet. I refer to it before liking a song if I think I already liked it

[SteveInMotion]

That's exactly how I started curating my stations "Elvis Costello &
Everything Else" and "The Ford and Carter Years." After the first year or
two, the rails were laid and I knew how to dial back the thumbs-ups and
looked for the opportunities to thumbs-down. (Oddly, after commenting here
a few weeks ago, some of the old magic variety starting coming back.)

[jasonkayzar]

My main station was Created on Sep 19, 2013.

I have 9,980 "Thumbs Up" songs and artists, and 4,4886 "Thumbs Down"

Until a couple of years ago, I would not only hear an endless selection of the songs I had curated, but an endless selection of new songs.

Now, I hear the same 20 artists endlessly. The whole reason I subscribed 10 years ago was to avoid Pop Radio, which is what Pandora has become.

Why does my playlist no longer dig below the surface?

If your suggestions are that I have to constantly curate and change selections, I can just use my Amazon Music service. I pay for Pandora to do the mixing.

[AdamPandora]

@jasonkayzar I moved your post over to this existing thread: Station Repetition

Check out the accepted solution to this thread for instructions on how you can improve your station if it is getting too repetitive.

Hope this helps!

[Devenpahl]

Pandora, you dont get it!

It's not that we want to hear 'less' of an artist. We want to hear more similar suggestions in between, like it was in the beginning....

Pandora had become something completely different now so I'd rather just buy albums every month instead of paying for a "playlist"

Get it together Pandora staff, or you're gonna crash!

Probably better off spending the money we spend on the Pandora subscription on actually buying the albums. My Pandora shuffle just plays the same songs as if it were an iTunes playlist. Pandora is starting to make me hate the artists i used to live by over playing the same songs every day. That's not healthy for marketing music! Pandora is a bunch of nerds who probably don't even like music. They're just trying to make money offv the music industry. I'm going to cancel my Pandora subscription for good for that reason. 

Moderator Edit: Merged posts

[abbottshabit]

I tried all of the above. Plays the same songs everyday. Same song several times per day. This is why I don't listen to FM. Some jack **ahem** in an office wants to play me the hits over and over and over. Just put the album on and hit random but no they play same song. I'm switching to something 

[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!

[Kidjef]

Yep.

I just canceled my subscription. Despite having hundreds of stations, the shuffle function just plays the same artists and songs over and over and over again. It's maddening. Especially since that was to me the biggest selling point over other services. And since this clearly has been an issue for the longest time. 

[Ken4153]

I subscribed to Pandora because of its superior algorithms to provide music similar to a chosen artist or song.  New selections would be injected every week - keeping the stations fresh with a minimum of repeats.This has been wonderfully true until a couple of months ago.

Now I get 95% the same selections with an occasional new selection inserted. Could your robot selector be slacking off - has COVID - OR is it throttled back for $4.99/mo subscribers - OR worse yet has Pandora's new owners cut back on the main reason I use Pandora?

[AdamPandora]

@Ken4153 I moved your post over to this existing thread: Station Repetition

Check out the accepted solution to this thread for instructions on how you can improve your station if it is getting too repetitive.

Hope this helps!

[Ken4153]

Adam :

I deleted both my likes and dislikes and now I'm getting more fresh music in the mix.  

I thank you!

[AdamPandora]

Happy to hear it, @Ken4153.

Enjoy the music!  

[Ken4153]

Thanks man, I appreciate you.

[jimmy89]

trash response does not work

[SLjimbolian]

Recently, I’ve been noticing whenever I listen to any of my stations, the same song would play again several songs later.  

For example, I listened to “Wall of Death” by The Prodigy on my The Prodigy station and it the played again about 7 songs later.  Even when I listened to my Alice In Chains station last Friday, the same songs were playing again after several tracks later.  My network connection is fine so I doubt that’s the issue.

It’s rather annoying so I’m hoping this gets fixed.

[GeraldPandora]

Hi @SLjimbolian 👋

I moved your post over to this existing thread: Station Repetition

Check out the accepted solution to this thread for instructions on how you can improve your station if it is getting too repetitive.

Hope this helps!

[SLjimbolian]

I don't think my problem is specific to "Station Repetition".

I mean just now I listened to "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" by Jeff Beck, then it played a song by Return To Forever, and after that it went straight back to "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" by Jeff Beck.  And the thing is that song wasn't even thumbs upped.

I see this more of a technical issue than something with my station preferences.

[twl1582]

Why do you play the same songs all the time? Is there not a live person working there?

[GeraldPandora]

Hi @twl1582 

Welcome to the Community. I moved your original post onto an existing similar thread under Station Repetition.

Please check our accepted solution on how to improve your stations for your listening sessions.

Happy listening! 🎧