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What music will Thumbprint Radio play?

Mechaworx
Local Performer

Hi All,

First time poster here, I have been a paying member of Pandora since about 2008 so a very long time. Over the course of my membership, I have liked approximately 400+ songs (if not more) from my various radio stations. I am assuming that thumbprint radio - when selected - will play for me all songs that I have ever liked.

However, this doesn't seem to be the case. As of late, it seems to be paying these terrible songs that I would never for the life of me have selected with a Thumbs up. In fact the songs that they play back are not part of any station that I've created.

Can anyone tell me why this is happening or how I can not have Thumbprint radio not play songs that I have not liked?

Thanks and stay safe everyone!

 

Moderator Edit: Edited title for clarity

Labels (1)
1 Solution

Accepted Solutions

AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@Mechaworx Welcome to the community! 👋🏽

Thumbprint Radio uses your thumbs to create a unique listening experience. By playing both thumbed-up and non-thumbed tracks from across all your stations, we hope to bring you lots of your favorites while sprinkling in some new finds in a seamless listening journey.

So not only will this station play songs you've thumbed up on your other collected stations in the past, it will also play new tracks based off your prior listening habits on your other stations. 

On top of this, you also have the ability to Thumb Up or Thumb Down tracks that play on your actual Thumbprint Radio station.

Thumbing a track up or down on Thumbprint Radio won't affect its thumb rating elsewhere. Just like your other stations, if you thumb it up, you'll hear more tracks like that, and if you thumb it down, it won't play again on Thumbprint Radio, but will remain thumbed up on the original station.

So be sure to thumb freely on Thumbprint Radio; this will help us learn which thumbs you want to hear more of, and which you aren't interested in anymore.

Hope this helps! 

View solution in original post

14 Replies

AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@Mechaworx Welcome to the community! 👋🏽

Thumbprint Radio uses your thumbs to create a unique listening experience. By playing both thumbed-up and non-thumbed tracks from across all your stations, we hope to bring you lots of your favorites while sprinkling in some new finds in a seamless listening journey.

So not only will this station play songs you've thumbed up on your other collected stations in the past, it will also play new tracks based off your prior listening habits on your other stations. 

On top of this, you also have the ability to Thumb Up or Thumb Down tracks that play on your actual Thumbprint Radio station.

Thumbing a track up or down on Thumbprint Radio won't affect its thumb rating elsewhere. Just like your other stations, if you thumb it up, you'll hear more tracks like that, and if you thumb it down, it won't play again on Thumbprint Radio, but will remain thumbed up on the original station.

So be sure to thumb freely on Thumbprint Radio; this will help us learn which thumbs you want to hear more of, and which you aren't interested in anymore.

Hope this helps! 

Mechaworx
Local Performer

Ah, ok so you're still trying to feed me new songs on Thumbprint radio. It's just that it's trying to feed me gospel songs and songs about Jesus which I'm totally not interested in.

In fact I would expect it to play mostly my songs that I have thumbed up from my stations,

But this has been very helpful. Thank you.

 

Edited for mispellings.

scQue814
Diamond in the Rough

"Thumbprint radio" was one of the first in a long series of so-called improvements to pandora that I, personally, find to absolutely useless. Why? When you've got 100 stations, all very diverse (I even have 2 different david bowie stations to help organize his "Eras" a bit better)... Thumbprint radio is just a big hot mess! Chris isaac followed by dvoriak... Followed by electric six and vienna boys choir... Then neo-tango from astor piazzola... Chinese "Mando-pop"... And then bauhaus or siouxie sioux?


No thank you.

0 Kudos

AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@scQue814 I moved your post to this thread since it is more in line with the feedback you are providing.

If you'd prefer to have a playlist that is made up of all of your thumbs up ratings, you might consider upgrading to Pandora Premium.

My Thumbs Up is a playlist that collects your Thumbed-Up tracks from each of your stations. When you sign up for Pandora Premium, we begin it by adding your 1,000 most recent Thumbs (if you have that many). Moving forward, every time you Thumb Up a song on one of your stations or eligible playlists, it will be automatically added to My Thumbs Up.

Unlike Thumbprint Radio, which plays your Thumbed-Up tracks along with other you may like, My Thumbs Up playlists will only play the songs you have Thumbed-Up.

You can also pick and choose what songs you want to hear on this playlist, rather than having it randomly cycle through the thumbs up ratings you've provided on your stations.

To listen to this playlist after upgrading to Pandora Premium, go to My Collection, sort by Playlists and select My Thumbs Up.

You can customize this playlist by manually adding or removing songs and your stations and additional playlists will not be affected.

Hope this helps! 😄

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scQue814
Diamond in the Rough

@AdamPandora, If you'd actually read my comment you would see that I think the very notion of thumbprint radio--and now also now my thumbs up--are utterly daft for someone with over 100 very diverse stations that do not play well with one another.

I get that you're trying to spin my negative comment into a positive one for other users, but I need to be honest and say that really don't appreciate that you're doing that.

Stop eliminating features and functionality that we regularly use and appreciate and replacing them with things that seem like a childish distraction from the fact that you're modding interface contrary to our usage patterns.

 

Moderator Edit: Format

shmebo
Local Performer

Pandora is rapidly and annoyingly becoming everything I pay for music services to avoid.

First, the Thumbprint station. I loved this...before. While I do enjoy new music suggestions a lot of the time, there are days when I just want to hear the stuff I already know I like. Thumbprint radio has evidently become just like all other stations with non-thumbed suggestions, but also throwing in the most random and utterly awful suggestions. Worse...

Thumbs down no longer seems to work. There are several songs that I have tried to rid from my listening experience, but they just keep coming back, and quite repetitively.

And speaking of repetitive, while obviously I do like to hear songs I have given a thumbs up, I can't think of anyone who likes to hear the same song 20 times a day every day. It makes me eventually vote it down just to get rid of it...but then it keeps coming back anyway like a musical zombie that just can't be killed!

And finally, the artist commercials/stories. I realize they're not "technically" commercials, but I hate them, they annoy me, they are too frequent, they are extremely repetitive, the little noise that announces them has become like nails on a chalkboard, and I specifically pay Pandora my money so I don't have to listen to people talking. Call them whatever you want, they're commercials. I am not a fan of calling a thing something else to sneak it in where it isn't wanted and someone is literally paying money to avoid it.

Now, I have Pandora Plus for the aforementioned absence of commercials. Did the addition of Pandora Premium move the former Plus features to the next pay level? If so, I'm still not getting Premium, I'm just finding another streaming service. There are a lot of them now.

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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@shmebo Nice to see you around the community. 👋🏽

Thumbprint Radio:

If the tracks you're hearing don't appeal to you, feel free to give them a Thumb Down on Thumbprint Radio. It won't affect that song's Thumb rating elsewhere, but it will stop Thumbprint Radio from playing that track.

You may also want to review your other stations and Thumbs, as they inform the content on your Thumbprint Radio.

You can:

  1. Edit your individual stations to delete your Thumbs Up or Down, or delete the station entirely to remove it from your Thumbprint Radio mix.
  2. Try giving more Thumbs Up on other stations besides your Thumbprint Radio (if you're hearing too many unfamiliar songs), or 
  3. Give more Thumbs Up across your Pandora account (if your Thumbprint Radio is becoming repetitive).

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Artist messaging/stories:

The announcements you heard are not advertisements by Pandora. Instead, these are messages made by artists or curators on Pandora, alerting you of new music, tours in your area, or just thanking you for listening. You have the option of disabling Artist or Discovery Messages to prevent them from playing on your account.

To do that on a mobile device:

  1. Go to Profile.
  2. Tap the Settings gear in the top right corner and then Advanced.
  3. Scroll down to Artist Audio Messages. If they are enabled, you will see something like Playing on 15 Stations. Tap that to view which stations have these messages enabled.
  4. If there's a particular artist you'd like to continue to hear from, or who you think you might like to see in concert, I'd recommend disabling the artist messages on a station-by-station basis. If you'd prefer to remove all the messages instead, simply turn off the Play Artist Audio Messages toggle.

To do that from your computer:

  1. Click the icon (initial or picture) in the top right corner of the page.
  2. Select Settings, then Content Settings.
  3. Toggle the switch to turn Artist Audio Messages Off, or if you'd like to disable these messages for specific stations, uncheck individual boxes underneath Play Artist Audio Messages.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Pandora Plus vs. Pandora Premium:

I do see you are currently upgraded to Pandora Plus.

I'm happy to help explain the differences between Pandora Plus (what you are currently upgraded with) and Pandora Premium.

Simply put, Pandora Plus subscribers get access to our industry-leading internet radio and podcast service with added features to enhance the listening experience.

With your Pandora Plus subscription, you have:

  • Ad-free music;

  • Unlimited skips;

  • The ability to replay songs;

  • The option to download radio stations for offline listening.

On the other hand, Pandora Premium subscribers receive all the same benefits, as well as on-demand control.

So Pandora Premium subscribers can:

  • Listen to songs or albums on-demand;

  • Create custom playlists;

  • Download songs, albums or playlists for offline listening;

  • Access Higher Quality Audio;

  • Queue content to keep the music playing.

Hope this helps! 😄

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scQue814
Diamond in the Rough

I, too, was getting tons of repetition for a while.  And I suspect it was due to the engineers tweaking a "live" system.  Seems to have evened out for me.  How about you?  

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dfresh77
Local Performer

My thumbprint radio isn't playing all of my station thumbs up so I suspect it's the same issue.

 

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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@dfresh77 I moved your post over to this existing thread: What music will Thumbprint Radio play?

To clarify, Thumbprint Radio isn't a station that solely plays tracks you've thumbed up across your stations.

Thumbprint Radio uses your thumbs to create a unique listening experience. By playing both thumbed-up and non-thumbed tracks from across all your stations, we hope to bring you lots of your favorites while sprinkling in some new finds in a seamless listening journey.

So not only will this station play songs you've thumbed up on your other collected stations in the past, it will also play new tracks based off your prior listening habits on your other stations. 

Check out the accepted solution to this thread for more information.

Hope this helps!

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dfresh77
Local Performer
The issue is that it's not playing a selection at all but seems to be honed in a one or two of my stations. Prior to whatever upgrade was installed, it would usually play 4-5 tracks from a station and then cycle to the next one.
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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thanks for following up and clarifying that with me, @dfresh77.

I recommend checking out the accepted solution to this thread if you are running into repetition when listening to Thumbprint Radio: Thumbprint Radio Station Repetition

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NoVariety
Local Performer

Anybody else feel like their very deep and curated stations have been neutered down to the same 50 or so songs?  I recently (accidentally) activated Thumbprint Radio was thrilled to hear old Thumbed Up songs I hadn't heard on their home stations in YEARS.  But after about 6 months, Thumbprint is doing the same thing.  Plays the same 50 or so songs every time I turn it on -- and mostly the same ones that play on their home station.  There are songs I specifically added to the playlist that never ever play, while other tracks by the same artist plays constantly.  WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VARIETY?  Is the algorithm losing brain power?  FYI, I can't listen to any station playing The Beatles without hearing Get Back within the first five tracks.  I'm guessing Pandora decided to promote that song since the documentary came out.

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AdamPandora
Community Manager
Community Manager

@NoVariety Sorry to hear your Thumbprint Radio station is becoming repetitive. I do have some suggestions that may help.

If you don't have many stations, you may want to create more stations and give more thumbs up, to give Thumbprint more feedback to work with.

Be sure to thumb freely on Thumbprint Radio; this will help us learn which thumbs you want to hear more of, and which you aren't interested in anymore. Thumbing a track up or down on Thumbprint Radio won't affect its thumb rating elsewhere. Just like your other stations, if you thumb up a track, you'll continue to hear it and tracks like it, and if you thumb it down, it won't play again on Thumbprint Radio. You can always remove the thumbs down later if you want to bring the track back into rotation on Thumbprint.

You can also use the I'm tired of this track/song feature for tracks that you still enjoy, but don't want to hear again for a while. To find this feature on mobile, tap the album art of the currently playing track, then the three dots on the right. From a computer, click the ellipses near the album art to reveal the option.

I hope this is helpful.

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