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Amazon Alexa: Won't Play Requested Station

gprayback
Opening Act

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.

Labels (1)
237 Replies

gprayback
Opening Act

Are you saying that following this process, the Alexa Pandora skill started to find stations that it had previously not been able to find?

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TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator

Pandora Update: 1/19/23

Hello! Thank you for continuing to post your experience around Alexa not able to play requested stations.

Our engineering team is aware of this and working with Amazon to further investigate. Unfortunately, this investigation has taken more time as this issue is more complicated than originally thought.

We understand that this is a frustrating experience and apologizes for the continued inconvenience.

All users who have posted on this thread have been added to our existing ticket. For any new user, please feel free to post and you will be added to the ticket.

Please keep in mind that this thread is only for users who are running into trouble when requesting a station on Alexa. If you're experiencing another issue with Alexa, please create a new post or review the current threads that may be similar.

Moderators will continue to update this thread with any new information as it is provided to us. In the meantime, you can use the following steps as a work-around to listen to a station on your Alexa device:

  • Open the Pandora app and start your station.
  • Next open the Alexa App and tap Play in the bottom navigation menu.
  • Locate the same station in Pandora section found under Recently Played.
  • Tap on the station to choose your preferred speaker.

We appreciate your continued understanding as we work on this.


Tanner | Community Moderator

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@PandoraSupport

gprayback
Opening Act

Thank you for providing the update! I am glad you are working on it. The workaround you provide is how I am working around it currently. 

TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator

You're welcome, @gprayback! Thanks for your continued patience, I know how frustrating this can be. I also use Pandora with Alexa.


Tanner | Community Moderator

> Follow us on Twitter
@PandoraSupport

789gbkj
Underground

Couldn't agree more and have been complaining about this for years.

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akabk
Local Performer

this is very disruptive and I'm at wits end.  Was about to cancel my Pandora account but the update from development yesterday gives me at least some hope that this is being worked on. 

67King
Local Performer

Add me to the list!  I had always played Mt personal (Harry smaller subset), but a week ago, had it play Rolling Stones radio.  Now it won't go back

Gypsywillow
Local Performer

My Alexa STILL won't play my Pandora stations, either. So incredibly frustrating.

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skoehler122
Local Performer

I'm having this problem as well.

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kevingeorgw8
Underground

Please add me to the list. I can play most stations through Alexa on verbal request, but not the station I curated (which of course is the one I play most often)

Also, why is this labeled as “Solved”, when the only “solution” provided is that “we’re working on it, and in the meantime, do it in this way that defeats the entire purpose of what you are trying to do?” Ie, using a voice assistant through selecting options on your phone is not what the people here are looking for, and I could just have a cheap Bluetooth speaker if that’s what I wanted. This “solution” should not be marked as a solution, and it’s very sneaky and misleading on the part of Pandora to label it as such

Moderator Edit: Merged posts and format

fcorral
Underground

I have had this issue going on for months now, for the last 5 years never had a problem, now Alexa says " can't find xxxxx station", the only way to play my stations is through my phone and connect to Alexa as a Bluetooth speaker. I have no issues with Spotify or other accounts.

jpc6585
Local Performer

I have been a pandora subscriber since 2008. Please help, this has been happening for months. This only happens to my most important station. Alexa cannot find my station, even though I can play it on every other device without a problem. Please fix this asap, if this issue is not resolved by the time my next billing happens, I will be canceling the service unfortunately. 

akabk
Local Performer

as frustrated as I am with not being able to select the station that Pandora plays on Alexa, I would LOVE it if it would tell me "can't find xxxx station".  Instead, it creates some random station that sounds nothing like what I asked for so I keep getting a bunch of random stations in my station list.  Alexa integration is just awful and I'm about to drop Pandora and look somewhere else.

 

[EDIT] I need to clarify, I would LOVE it if when I asked for a station, it played the station.  my current situation is that when I ask Alexa to play a specific station of mine it [1] won't play that station, and [2] instead will create some garbage station that has nothing to do with what I asked for.

 

[1] + [2] = Unhappy user who should cancel their account

nw62
Underground

add me to the list of those it doesn't work for (and it used to). Alexa won't play the radio stations I have created in my pandora account.

jdb2
Underground

I've been using the workaround that consists of telling my Echo to "Play Darkwave Radio from [my name's] Pandora". This morning I inadvertently told my Echo(s) to play my "Darkwave Radio" Pandora station the "old way" which is "Play my Pandora Station Darkwave Radio", and guess what, it worked! 😀 I don't know if this is just specific to me eg. a one-off or something, but it seems the issue has been resolved in my case. Has anyone else experienced similar behavior?

jdb2

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gprayback
Opening Act

I spent some time this morning messing around with it and neither of those workarounds work for me. The only work around that has worked for me is using the Alexa app to play the station. There are no voice commands that I can find that seem to address the problem. Neither "Alexa play Graveyard Radio from Geoff's Pandora," nor "Alexa play my Pandora station Graveyard Radio," result in the skill finding the station even though the station clearly shows up in the Alexa app in the Pandora skill section and plays just fine when I launch it from there.

nw62
Underground

Exact same.

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docwattsman
Local Performer

Yep. Same issue since October. Very annoying. Tried the suggested workaround today and this is still not working for me. "Cannot find any station 'Daft Reactor Society' on Pandora' or it will try to guess and play Daft Punk or Juno Reactor.

Been six months guys. If you can't get this fixed, hire me to your dev team and I will fix it.

I have paid for family Pandora for years, and been subscribing since '08. It is not a very good sign that such a widespread issue would let it fester for so long. Not very encouraging when it comes to making decisions about continuing to subscribe to the service.

KattKorner
Local Performer

I am also having this issue with a number of stations that used to play on Alexa (ex: Fusion Jazz)

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jdb2
Underground

Well, it looked like the issue had been resolved, for me at least. I had told my Echo(s) to "Play my Pandora station Darkwave Radio" several times and it had worked. Then, yesterday, it stopped working and reverted to its old behavior 😕 Don't know what is causing this.

jdb2

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