Amazon Alexa: Automatically creates stations

[m_alvare5]

Hi everyone.  I'm super annoyed with Alexa creating a new station everytime it misunderstands what we requested.  It creates dozens of new stations every week and adds it to My Collection.  Is there any way to prevent this behavior?  I want it to play only the stations I have already created, I don't want it to be creating new stations.

Thanks.

[RotorHead695]

I set my house up on a separate Pandora account using Pandora family.  I never logon to it from any device except my echoes, so I don't see the clutter.  The family account provide 6 logins, so myself, my wife and my house all have our own customized music.  I let my dad use my left over ones.  It's not much more cost than a generic premium account.

[Eighthnote74]

Up until a couple weeks ago I never had trouble with this. My pandora account is linked to Alexa. It would always play the last station I played. Now it plays random **ahem** by artist and genre I have no interest in at all.

I signed into my pandora account and found 10 stations I never added. I deleted those stations and Alexa still plays unwanted music. I can get around some of this my asking Alexa to play "My Pink Floyd Pandora station" but I never had to do that before. I would simply say "Alexa play music". We need a way to LOCK our collection so Pandora / Alexa stops adding unwanted music. I do not see any setting on Alexa or Pandora to do this.

[AdamPandora]

@Eighthnote74 To clarify, are those unwanted stations accidentally getting created by Alexa when you request to play one of your existing stations?

Or is this an issue with an unauthorized user accessing your account and creating the stations?

If you think someone is accessing your account, let me know and I can escalate this over to our support team so they can further assist.

[Boricua3205]

I have the same issue, started a few days ago.  I used to be able to simply say “Alexa play Pandora” and it would play whatever I as listening to the last time.  Now it creates and plays “Pandora’s TopLive Songs” and adds it to my list.  This is beyond annoying, I have already checked the utterance report and Alexa is hearing me properly.

[JessicaLee]

I would bet money that @Eighthnote74 is simply generically asking Alexa to "play music", or perhaps requesting a specific song/artist/genre, and Alexa/Pandora are creating unwanted stations for each request. For example, if you say "Alexa, play Smooth Jazz" it will create a "Smooth Jazz Radio" station on Pandora and play that, and the station gets added to your station list permanently (until you manually delete it).

Station creation should always require an explicit keyword, e.g. "Alexa, create a Smooth Jazz station". If you say something like "Alexa, play Smooth Jazz" and there is no matching station and nothing matching in Prime music or your Amazon music library, she should respond that she can't find "Smooth Jazz" and ASK if you would like to create a Pandora station for it (then if you say "yes", it would do so).

[kleeh]

I would think this is probably NOT a desired behavior -- at least without some kind of confirmation.

[Eighthnote74]

You should give gambling up. You apparently do not have the insight for it. That's not what Eighthnote74 is doing. With all the responses on this topic it is abundantly clear that like most tech and telecommunication companies Pandora is not listening to their subscribers. Pandora has no intent to ever fix this. Poor or non-existent customer service is the norm. Their business model is advertise promising the moon but once we have you on the subscription list the only thing we want to see from you is your payment. Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, Pandora, Dish, Direct TV...........and the list goes on. The American consumer has become a herd of sheep. Politics included. It's a throw away take it or leave it world. We just have to adapt and survive in it.

[oogiedoogie]

I have been a Pandora supporter for over 10 years. Unfortunately, I have just cancelled my Pandora subscription because they refuse to fix the issue in which Alexa indiscriminately adds stations every time it either (a) misunderstands my request, or (b) doesn't find a matching station. This leads to massive bloating of my Pandora station list which I have to manually edit to address this problem. Also, Pandora deleted many of my stations for no reason.  I am disappointed with Pandora at this point, but would gladly resubscribe if they can fix these obvious problems.

[trublondy1947]

I have had this issue for the past year or so and had no problem previously to play my 1 and only playlist I love to listen to "gravity radio" on my alexa devices. I have double and triple checked that my station in my collection is named correctly, and that Alexa is hearing me correctly and am 100% sure it is just the programming behind it that just plain can't find my already established station that I've had in use for 6 years! Then it goes in and creates a new gravity radio station on top of the one I have approx 1400 uplikes on! Then i have to sign into Pandora on my machine (because for whatever reason, I don't know why they won't allow you to remove stations in the app)! It's really really frustrating! I can only imagine what those people who pay for the darn thing feel like! 

Also, totally agree with you that keywords should be used - if it can't find it ask to create before creating! They ask me if I want to duplicate items on my shopping list, like c'mon alexa and pandora! I would think they would do this as well!

I do agree with @eightnote74 though, Pandora it's a throw away subscription, that all they do is take your money! Same with Netflix, Hulu, etc. I just ended up not using Pandora because Alexa Echos are my main devices which I play music on. If Pandora refuses to fix it, then sorry -- I refuse to pay for it or get my computer out and blow out my machine speakers to hear music throughout my house. It's as simple as that! 

[jbx1138]

Pretty sure I just figured out how to stop this! I agree it's super annoying. You can change the default app that alexa uses to respond to artist name or genre requests. Deselect pandora as an option and then you have to tell her to play a station "on pandora" otherwise she'll use Amazon music. Huzzah! See attached app screen shots. Get to this screen and click change to deselect Pandora.

 

[wrwaite]

Glad it works for you. I have already tried this and new pandora stations still get created when i ask alexa to play a certain existing pandora station.

[chowbiz]

I am surprised to find that in October 2021, this is still an issue.  I use Pandora with my Alexa all the time, but it's been quite some time since I looked at the list in my "collection."  Clearly, still a problem, as I have 85 "collections."

I would propose a modification of the request to separate "collections" from "stations."  "Stations" would be what I create myself.  "Collections" would be suggestions by Pandora based on what I've listened to.  For example, let's say I create a station based on the music of Stephane Grapelli, which is jazz, but at some point also ask for a song by Coldplay.  Pandora might create a "collection" of music like Coldplay, which would be suggested, or might follow in play after a Coldplay song.  But when I ask for my station, I get my station. 

I get that Pandora is interested in maintaining my engagement, especially to generate ad revenue, but the Pandora/Alexa combo shouldn't result in my polluted stations.

[tritodd]

Ugg... 3 years later...  Still not fixed... Switching to the Pandora free account.

[ali3]

Please upvote this: https://community.pandora.com/t5/Feature-Requests/Stop-automatic-station-adds-when-playing-them-for-...

[Eighthnote74]

Not what is happening at all. I do not request songs anything specific. I create a station by artist and tune to one of them. It seems at the time of this reply Pandora has improved the adding station problem.

[MJHilbyCrew]

It's interesting that this is marked solved.  It might not have a solution, but it's not solved.

The work around I've just setup & will see how it goes is to create a different Pandora account for my kids use with their Echo Dot.  The idea is to allow Alexa to still use Pandora & bar it from the account I care about from getting nuisance stations created & from muddling up my stations list. 

[MJHilbyCrew]

The work around I've just setup & will see how it goes is to create a different Pandora account for my kids use with their Echo Dot.  The idea is to allow Alexa to still use Pandora & bar it from the account I care about from getting nuisance stations created & from muddling up my stations list.  

(I did this all on my mobile.)  This involves disconnecting the Pandora link (I did this in my Alexa app).  I then had to log out of Pandora & back in with my new account.  Then, back in the Alexa app, relink Pandora.  This should link it to the new account.  Then you'll want to go back & log out again & relog in with your preferred account.

Hopefully, the mess is then contained in the new account that you'll never look at anyways.