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How do stations work?
You can access stations designed to introduce you to new music through the artists and songs that you know and love. You can type in your favorite artist or song and Pandora will do the rest. Music that is similar to your musical tastes will play in your station.
When listening to stations, you are able to rate music by giving it a Thumbs Up (meaning you like it and want more music like that on your station) or Thumbs Down (meaning you don't like it, or don't want music like that on this particular station). When you give a song a Thumbs Down, that song will never play again on that station.
How to create your perfect station ✨
Making improvements to your existing stations:
We want all our listeners to get the most from their Pandora experience as they discover and enjoy music they love. In that spirit, here are a few things we've come up with to get your stations playing great songs, so you can skip less and enjoy more.
Hope this keeps your stations playing music you love. 🎶
...Still having trouble?
Here are some frequently asked questions regarding stations:
Station repetition:
It's true there can be a certain amount of repetition in some stations. Each listener has different tastes when it comes to hearing the familiar versus discovering new songs. Finding the right balance for each individual is something we continue to work on.
In the meantime, here are some things you can do to improve your stations:
Running through these steps should increase the variety of the station pretty quickly during your listening sessions.
Repetition with Genre stations:
Genre stations, such as "Today's Hits" or "Showtunes Radio," are stations created and curated by Pandora, and they often include more mainstream artists and songs.
As an alternative, we recommend creating your own station, using an artist or song that you think best represents a particular genre. Then use Thumbs to help guide the station you are trying to create.
Additionally, you may Add Variety to the station you create, in order to include other artists or songs you'd like to influence your station.
Keep in mind, each seed you add will inspire hundreds of other songs, so a little variety goes a long way. If you don't like the direction your station is headed, you can always edit your station seeds and Thumbs through the Station Details.
That said, when you're listening from a computer or mobile device you can access Pandora Modes to customize your station experience. You can pick different modes like Crowd Faves, Discovery and Deep Cuts. Let me know if you'd like more information about that.
Not hearing the artist or song your station was created for:
We understand that it's frustrating not to hear the song or artist that you've seeded a station with, but there's no way to control when or how often particular songs or artists will play on free Pandora or Pandora Plus, so it's not possible to create a station and hear that track play right away (though it could happen by chance). Because of our licenses, we have to limit the predictability of a certain song or artist from playing on those services.
That said, for complete control of what you hear on Pandora, try Pandora Premium. It combines our industry leading internet radio service with on-demand listening and easy playlist generation.
Alternatively, you can start a complimentary session simply by searching our library for a song or album, and clicking play. This will trigger a short advertisement, after which you can enjoy content on-demand. You can find out more about free sessions of Premium here.
*May be limited by certain licensing restrictions.
Hope this helps everyone!