Amazon Alexa: Won't Play Requested Station

[gprayback]

Recently stations that have always worked with the Pandora skill on an Alexa device have stopped working. I'll say something like "tell Pandora to play the station calm yoga music." Until recently, it would play  my station which matches that name. But recently it has stopped finding some stations. And once it loses it, it will never find it again. It feels like there's a cache or something that's storing names of recently played stations and if it isn't in the cache, the Pandora skill won't find it from the Alexa device. It's quite frustrating because this is the only way I listen to my music and I have to keep going to the Alexa app and finding my Pandora stations there. I don't understand why the Pandora skill can't find them.

[goladay5]

Thank you for the information.  @TannerPandora or @Pandora , should it now be on you to look through this thread and see all the information and reach out to Amazon to see where the problem is?  Your paying customers are frustrated.

[mccyclone]

Just want to add my 2 cents.

I have a routine to play a particular station that was working fine until this month. Now even when I click to activate the routine in the Alexa app it still does not play the station. It plays some dance music which is not included in any of my stations.

Additionally, when browsing recent stations in the Alexa app several of my stations are named as "unknown". I went to Pandora and played the station I wanted, came back to the Alexa app and clicked the most recent "unknown" station and it played the correct music.

[apb29]

please fix!  we can’t all be wrong

[volpushonit]

Good news! My devices work properly now when requesting custom Pandora stations. This happened within the last day or so.

[BT1247]

I am having the same problem. There are several stations that I used to listen to all the time on Alexa and now when I ask for that station it says "I cannot find that station". In case this is relevant, the stations this is happening for are all comedy stations (Kathleen Madigan, John Mulaney and a few others). I have these stations on my Pandora account on my iphone and they work fine, but Alexa says it cannot find them even though it used to find them without a problem.

[marknoell]

I'm having this same problem too! I ask to play a station, and it says it is going to play another station, then says there is a problem playing it. I have disabled the skill, uninstalled the app on iPhone, then reinstalled to both after waiting a day to disconnect, and same problem. I also noticed that when I re-enable the skill on Alexa app that it says it requires attention, but when I click on it nothing is showing that needs attention. Please show there is a fix!

I also cannot see any of my stations on the Alexa app, as described by other users.

mod edit: merged comments

[marknoell]

I also cannot see any of my stations on the Alexa app, as described by other users.

[Larry_B]

That happened to me and my wife one day. (We have separate Pandora accounts.) The following day the app was back to normal for both of us. 

Something to note - my wife has been able to use voice commands to call up her personal Pandora stations on her Echo devices all during the time I have not been able to call up my personal Pandora stations on my Echo devices.  This makes me think the issue may be more related to my Pandora account than my Echo devices. 

[jdb2]

I'm having essentially the same exact problem, which started this morning. I have two Amazon Echo Studios plus an Echo Sub in a 2.1 stereo pair. Up until this morning, I could say "Alexa, play my Pandora station Darkwave Radio" and my Echo(s) would play the requested station. Now, when I ask my Echo(s) to "Play my Pandora station Darkwave radio", instead of playing the requested station, my Echo replies with "Shuffling your stations from [my name]'s Pandora." *But*, if I ask my Echo(s) to "Play my Pandora station New Age Electronica," my Echo(s) correctly plays the requested station with a reply of "Playing New Age Electronica from [my name]'s Pandora." So, like other people with this problem, it seems to be station specific.

I did call Amazon device support about this and they basically blew me off telling me it wasn't their problem and to contact Pandora support -- I don't know how some of the other posters got their issue escalated.

Any info or help resolving this problem would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

jdb2

[volpushonit]

... and it's not working again. Dang, it worked for a few days! So weird. 

[apb29]

Has anyone heard anything substantive from Pandora on this? 

[Clover]

Tanner, A lot of us are waiting for a solution on this issue

[marknoell]

NOPE! Maybe they will do something when everyone cancels their subscription and begins using another music service!

[marknoell]

My answer from Amazon:

"Starting November 1, Prime members can shuffle play any artist, album or playlist from an expanded Prime Music catalog of 100 million songs ad-free. However, they can no longer pick and play a specific song and their playlists will now shuffle music and play similar songs.

Amazon is constantly innovating for our customers, bringing Prime members even more entertainment on top of the convenience and value they already have. We've expanded the music catalog to 100 million songs to ensure that customers can listen to the latest new releases and trending music, favorite artists, and previously unavailable curated content ad-free. Prime members also have ad-free access to the largest selection of top podcasts, including the Wondery catalog of premium shows and podcasts from CNN, ESPN, and The New York Times. All of this is new to Amazon Music for Prime members to improve their overall music and podcast experience."

They did elaborate some though suggesting I restart my router, etc.

[berner08]

I have the same problem as everyone else.  I've been a Pandora subscriber for a long long time.   Alexa won't play any of my hand curated stations.  The "utterance history" shows Alexa understands me perfectly.  I have a variety of echo devices, 2 Echo Shows, 3 generations of Echos, 2 generations of Echo Dots, all behave the same way.  "Alexa, play <insert station name> station on Pandora".  Her reply is always, "I can't find the station < station name > on Pandora".  "Alexa play Pandora", will get me the last station I play, and she will announce the station name.

[jdb2]

Well, I found a workaround. If I ask my Echo(s) to "Play Darkwave Radio from [my name]'s Pandora" it correctly plays the station with the response "Playing Darkwave Radio from [my name]'s Pandora."

I know this isn't a solution, but, if you're having a similar problem you might want to try several variations of your query which you use to play the specific Pandora station on your Echo that's giving you trouble -- it worked for me.

Anyway, this seems to be a problem with Amazon's back-end speech recognition engine.

jdb2

[marknoell]

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried that (again today) and still plays some other station entirely different from my request. I tried several variations of my request and none worked. I called Amazon twice and after being put on hold until I hung up (about 20 min) I sent a chat. I received a canned message that Amazon offers more music etc. and to unplug and replug my router which I do not know what that could possibly do.

Would be nice if Pandora could work out this major bug with Amazon. Otherwise I doubt I'll renew by subscription after 15 years.

[marknoell]

@Tanner  A lot of us are waiting for a solution on this issue

[dmjb5146]

What the heck do you do?

[SteveU]

Just adding my voice to the fray... This doesn't work for me either. Waiting on a solution from Pandora or Amazon, feeling like Godot...

[Larry_B]

I have a case open with Pandora on this and recently added some information. Here is the reply I received to my update:

Hi Larry,
Thanks for writing back, and providing us with additional information related to this issue.
We are aware of this issue and are working on it. I've passed your info along to our engineers.
We really appreciate your patience in the meantime!

Regina
Support Specialist
Pandora

This sounds promising.