Thumbs left on one station will play on others

[oshw8023]

My thumbs are starting to bleed over to my other stations. In other words, when I make a brand new station, it will play music I've thumbed from all my other stations. IE: Three Days Grace and Tom Petty will play on a Goo Goo Dolls station. What's the easiest way to fix this problem?

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

[TheDragonsDesig]

@AdamPandora to clarify, if you haven been paying attention

Thumbs are not station specific

I like an idiot listen to your add and started thumbing up song on my various stations.  Now, 20 of them, previously unique, are now generic mashups of any station I had actually thumbed up.

For those following me with same issue:

Use method mentioned above to delete every thumb up if you actually want unique stations,  then...

To actually customize a station ignore thumbs up. Only use artist or songs, and thumbsdown.

[Ganiden]

I really love the idea of Pandora, and I’ve been using it for many, many years, but I’ll be deleting my account due to this issue. Its not as simple as deleting all of my likes on existing stations, because I have customized stations that I’ve deleted and those likes remain on my account (over a hundred of them) and are bleeding into my new stations. I cant find the old stations because they were seeded from artists that I cant remember. Fundamentally, the way these custom stations and likes are managed is poorly architected and frustratingly vague.

Most concerning to me is the unwillingness to acknowledge the problem. It’s clear to me that Pandora is no longer a supported application, so I’m not sure why I’d continue to spend money each month to pay for it. Sad day for me, but I’ve felt pressure to move to Spotify for some time and this will be the last straw.

[DpL27]

All thumbs ☝

[eboneewolf]

There used to be an option to move tracks to another station. Why can't you bring it back? I love Chris Stapleton however he should NOT be playing on my Firefall station and does .... a lot! Bring back the option to move songs to a different station. 

[Stuv]

Are there any plans to correct this and make it so that Thumbs are station-specific? 

Also this is mislabeled as 'Solved' when all you did was come say '"no, you're wrong. :)"

[Alturk8tion]

I don't care if I necro this. It's been 3 years and this problem still persists. I've been using Pandora for almost a decade. **ahem** near. It NEVER used to bleed this bad. I have stations from when Pandora was still free. One is almost as old as my account so almost 10 years and even that station now sees bleed through with the thumbs from other stations. It only started doing this after Pandora got bought by SiriusXM. After 3 years, it's very clear that you at Pandora no longer care or support your product, even for us who've paid for years. Looks like I'll finally be moving to Spotify. I hope everyone leaves and you guys go under. You deserve it at this point.

[ctamutal]

I am now experiencing the same issues that others are experiencing. If I thumb up a song on one station and then play another station that's sort of similar suddenly the songs playing are the ones that I thumbed up on other stations that are similar. for example, I have a lot of rock stations and as I thumb up songs from one station and then go play another of my rock stations suddenly the same song I thumbed on that other station plays almost immediately on the second station. It didn't used to be this way. I've also found that I have some longtime stations, like an 80's station that I made years ago that was perfect, with lots of thumbs up of popular songs, but now it's suddenly playing deep cuts and I don't want that for that station. I do thumb up a lot of deep cuts on my rock stations, and what I'm thinking is that pandora is trying to "learn" what I like to listen to overall as a listener, thinking I like deep cuts, but I don't want it to function that way. I have spent years tailoring stations based up just what is on those stations, and now everything has suddenly changed the way it behaves and i don't like it. I'm having to create more stations to try and achieve the results that I had worked on for years but it's not working. It's almost like I have to delete every single station and thumb I've ever created on pandora and start completely from scratch ,and that's over a 100 stations  and probably 50,000 or more thumbs. terribly disheartening.

[mikemusick2]

I have about a dozen stations in my list (on a paid account, not this one), and in the past month or so have noticed that selections I have "thumbsed-up" on one station are showing up on others. They are all within the same general genre - "Classical" in this case - but the other stations are of distinct sub-genres.

I don't care for this. I have to run for the "thumbs-down" every time, say, a "Film Scores" selection, loud and bombastic in some cases, shows-up when I have the "Choral" station selected for the day's mellow listening.

Is there a way to prevent this? When I "thumbs-up" I expect to hear more of that selection within the context of the station currently playing, not someplace else.

Thanks.

[AdamPandora]

@mikemusick2 Nice to see you around the Community.

To clarify, thumbs are station specific - so any tracks you thumb up/down on one station won't actually affect your other stations.

This being said, if you believe you are hearing wildly out of place tracks on one of your stations, we are happy to help look into it further.

The next time it happens, please write us back with the following:

• The name of the station where this occurred:
  
• The name(s) of the out of place artist(s) on the station.
  
• The title(s) of the out of place track(s) that played.
  
• Were you able to give the out of place track(s) a Thumbs down?
  
• Were you listening using a Pandora Mode like Crowd Faves, Discovery or Deep Cuts?

Also if possible, please grab a screenshot of the out of place track that plays, and send that in a reply to this message.

Thanks for the help!

[SLjimbolian]

I think the real question should be is there a way to disable or prevent thumbs up tracks from previously created stations to show up on newly created stations?

So for example, I create a Radiohead station and start noticing Thumbs up tracks from my Beastie Boys station are playing on the Radiohead station.  I want to keep the stations separated, so instead of having to Thumbs down every time a "Thumbs up" track from Beastie Boys station plays on my Radiohead station, is there a setting that newly created stations will ignore Thumbs up tracks from my other stations?

[BI66S]

@AdamPandora @You don't get it... Stop being a bot and read these posts. Your statement is false, your algorithm does NOT work like you are saying. Thumbs on separate stations ARE causing those songs, regardless of genre, to appear on other stations. This happens a lot. It did not used to be this way. You guys need to stop sending the same canned response, recognize there's an issue, and at least lie about trying to fix it.

[mikemusick2]

This is still a big problem. I added a new-to-me station to my list a couple of days ago, and after the first "appropriate" selection played, there were at least six or seven subsequent selections that were clearly my thumbs from other stations of unrelated and inappropriate genre.

I shouldn't have to sit at my computer or Roku with my finger on the keyboard/remote to decline song after song I do not want to play on the selected station, but that seems to be required given the way it's currently working. Paid subscriptions, IMO, should expect a certain amount of human-assisted curation, and that doesn't appear to factor in the algorithms at all.

Pandora's AI seems to be all 'A' and very little 'I'. Fix it!

Moderator Edit: Format

[AdamPandora]

@mikemusick2 The next time it happens, please give the out of place track that plays a thumbs down and write us back with the following:

• The name of the station you were listening to:
  
• The date/time the out of place track(s) played
  
• The name(s) of the out of place artist(s) on the station.
  
• The title(s) of the out of place track(s) that played.
  
• Were you able to give the out of place track(s) a Thumbs down?
  
• Were you listening using a Pandora Mode like Crowd Faves, Discovery or Deep Cuts?

Also if possible, please grab a screenshot of the out of place track that plays, and send that in a reply to this message.

Thanks for the help!

[ctamutal]

So I did an experiment: my hard rock stations were all playing the same songs, ones that had been thumbed up recently in other hard rock stations of mine.

I kept getting the same songs from artists no matter what new hard rock stations I created.

I decided to create an additional station and use artist only mode, thumbing up most of the songs from the artists, I kept changing the seed to different artists that I like and thumbing up tracks.

after a lot of work I went back to one of my hard rock stations and boom now it’s playing tons of variety from those artists because I had thumbed up all their songs on another station

Proof that thumbs up are not just affecting the station you thumb them up on 

[convivian]

This has always been a problem for me with Pandora. I recently started a station for the reggae band Stick Figure. I've had a Jimmy Buffett station for a while now, and it's been fine until today, when it started picking up several reggae songs. While I suppose there's an "island" theme to both Buffett songs and reggae songs, the fact that the Buffett station didn't play any reggae prior to my creating (and "up thumbing") the Stick Figure station, makes it hard to believe there's no "bleed." And now I have to start down thumbing all the reggae on the Buffet station. Meanwhile, the Stick Figure station has recently started playing music from various other stations I have that I don't want on my SF station. The purpose of my creating a new station is to get new music, not to hear music I already have on other stations.

[Mugur]

It seems like the Pandora algorithm learns from my likes on one station and applies that to another station.

Please stop! This is so annoying. What I like on one station - I don't like on another.

> I end up having to thumbs-down songs I like, only because they are waay out of place.

> This "learning from other stations" slowly creeps stations towards becoming more similar to each other - undermining the purpose of creating and playing separate stations, and resulting in a bunch of stations that no longer have any distinction. It's kinda like a "decay" algorithm.

Please, either change the algorithm or at least give the user the option to shut that function off (in settings or something).

Thank you.

Moderator Edit: Format

[DE303]

@AdamPandora Wrong. They always bleed.

[mikemusick2]

This genre crossover problem is longstanding and getting very, very old:

HOW DO WE MAKE IT STOP?

We can assume at this late date that Pandora, as a policy, has no interest in fixing this problem, and, in fact, this "feature" has to be a key component of their business model. Lack of ability to "reset" a station is a clue, as well.

I just re-upped our paid account mostly because my wife has problems with technology changes. But what is the alternative here? "The Other Service" isn't a solution - I find their UI hopelessly cluttered. But if I were one of those tech billionaires looking for someplace to drop coin on "the next big thing", it would be an ambient music service that actually respected its customers.

😠

[AnneandCats]

Is this a way to get people to pay for premium? All my stations have bled together. Even if i delete or add a station it all is the same song as every station. The stations are meaningless now and I'm to the point of using a different platform. 

[mikemusick2]

Now that you mention it, I noticed that problem with a couple of new stations I added recently - they're all blending together. If there were only a simple fix, like deleting a station and then adding it back to reset it... nah, obviously too much to ask.

🙄