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.

[volpushonit]

Why is this marked as "Solved"? Clearly it is not. Being aware of the problem or issue is not solving the issue. Whatever change to your backend that occurred around the start of the comments being posted in this thread would be a great place to start. I already cancelled two premium subs, but still attempt to use the free subscription. 

[donaghyba5]

Why won’t Alexa play certain of my Pandora stations? She plays most just as requested, and yes, the skill is enabled. I’ve disconnected the account and reconnected more than once. It’s still the same two stations she won’t play. Instead she defaults to some weird station that doesn’t even exist in my collection. 

This is annoying. Am I really the only person this has happened to? Thoughts?

[tlange55]

I can't believe this problem just started happening to me.   Looks like you folks have been struggling with this for months.  I'm looking forward to the permanent fix to this problem.   

[amylynn2267]

I am SO excited someone is working on a solution to this and I definitely want to get added to the ticket.  I am using the work around, but it is, of course, not ideal.  I can not get Pandora to play "Amy's Music" on Pandora - this is one of my personal stations on Pandora.  As the initial post says, this is unique to this station (and it is the one I listen to all the time).  I would love to get this solved, I really miss it. 

• Which Alexa model and generation do you have?
  • I have 2 and it is happening on both
  • echo first generation
  • a sonos one second edition
• What phrase(s) did you say to Alexa? (Please be as specific as possible.)
  • "alexa, play Amy's music on Pandora"
  • this is exactly what my utterance history report says as well
• To clarify, when you request the station, does Alexa confirm the station name and won't play or does Alexa say it can't find the station?
  • Alexa says "I can't find the station Amy's music on Amy's Pandora"

[RickO]

I am having the same issue. 

[DenverMoose]

Sooo 5 months and no solution here?  By more complex, does that mean you're writing an new app for alexa platform, or something different?   Do we need to go elsewhere?

[Gar]

Since Alexa won't play my stations via Voice, I have to come here to entertain myself.

Anyway, funny/sad story:

Early last week, I decided to contact Amazon support. It's "chat" support. Login to your Amazon account and keep clicking "other" until you actually talk to a person.

I tell them, "Yeah, I've got this routine that runs every morning to get me out of bed and I've not modified it in years and now suddenly it quit working".

They say, "Does it give you any errors".

To which I respond, "Yeah, it is suddenly telling me it can't find my "Awesome Stuff" station on Pandora"

Without going line by line, they asked me a bunch of stupid questions like, "have you tried it on multiple devices?", "have you tried disabling and re enabling the skill".

Then, they gave me a long list of things to try and told me to get back with them when I was done. "Leave the chat window open".

By the time I was done with all their steps (it involved enabling the skill via the web browser instead of the app and other things), I typed it that "I was done, but the routine still doesn't play my station".

So, apparently, the Amazon tech chats timeout after about 5 minutes and my "chat was assigned to a new person". They asked if I was a new Pandora user and I sadly informed them that I've been paying for Pandora for probably about 20 years. And furthermore, this same routine has been working for the last 5 or more.

They gave me more stuff to try and it again timed out. By this time I was insane with just trying to get someone to fix the darn thing so I kept going. I  went through six support people before I said, "Look, you're the 7th person I've chatted with and you all ask the same questions. Could you just read through the 2 hours of chat and send me an email when it's fixed."

Well, 3 days later, my routine worked again! I thought yay! And later that day, I said, "Alexa, play my Awesome Stuff station from Pandora" and she said, "I can't find Awesome Stuff on Pandora" 😞

My routine still works though!

On a side note, I've noticed that Amazon has introduced "streams". I can have different streams of music playing on different devices or groups of devices.

I think this is as much a Pandora problem as it is an Amazon problem.

However, being in the software industry for 25+ years, I can guarantee you it shouldn't be this difficult to fix. Seems like it's more political and/or financial.

[Rhysalius]

I spent about 5 hours with Amazon chats talking to multiple people. I went
through the exact same experience and they all asked me the same thing. It
was ridiculous and finally I chatted with someone who finally put in a
ticket on my behalf. Not that it matters much, that ticket has been open
for about 3 months now...

Thanks for the entertainment!

[Iowafarmgirl77]

You've decided you know what I want based on ALL of my likes, so the algorithm powers that be created "Thumbprint Radio." This is a nice idea in theory except that sometimes I want relaxing music like choral hymns only or classical only. But often I want a mix of basically everything else in a few genres which I named "My Favorite Mix," without the other mixed in. Now when I ask Alexa to play My Favorite Mix, she insists on Thumbprint Radio which mixes all my radios. That much variety mixed together is just not what I want. And she won't listen, even after I've DELETED Thumbprint Radio, it just keeps coming back! Please reconsider giving everyone Thumbprint Radio or Thumbs Up Radio!

[AdamPandora]

@Iowafarmgirl77 I moved your post over to this existing thread: Amazon Alexa: Won't Play Requested Station

Your feedback has now been added to the ticket we have open with the engineers who are looking into this.

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.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to look into this.

[Gokupe2]

same problem here , especially playing user created stations

also the alexa routines don't work for playing user created stations

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

[AdamPandora]

@Gokupe2 Thanks for your patience as our engineers continue to investigate this issue.

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 understanding as we work on this.

[tubalove]

I have 15 Pandora stations, which I use primarily for music practice. For the last two days, one of the stations, Spaced Out, is missing on my Amazon Echo. Alexa responds by saying, "Sorry I don't know that". Meanwhile, it is still showing up on my PC. All other stations are perfectly fine. This has never happened before.

[AdamPandora]

I moved your post over to this existing thread: Amazon Alexa: Won't Play Requested Station

@tubalove I moved your post over to this existing thread: Amazon Alexa: Won't Play Requested Station

Your feedback has now been added to the ticket we have open with the engineers who are looking into this.

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.

Thanks for your patience as we continue to look into this.

[tubalove]

I have a first generation Echo. I say, "Alexa, play Spaced Out Radio from Pandora". Alexa responds, "Hmmm, I don't know that". As I mentioned, I have 15 total stations, and all 14 others are fine. And except for this, the device has worked like a charm. Sorry for a somewhat tardy response. 

[AdamPandora]

@tubalove Your additional feedback has now been added to the ticket as well.

Thanks again for your patience! 

[kevingeorgw8]

So, a full 6 months since this issue started, the solution is still to open the app that is FAR less user friendly than the Pandora app itself, and use the Echo like it’s a $15 Bluetooth speaker? And of course, with the $15 Bluetooth speaker, I could open the pandora app and click on the station quickly, but with the Alexa app, I have to navigate through several screens to get the correct device, and then not even be able to find my station (the one I wanted to play this morning I haven’t played in a while, so it’s not under recents, and of course it didn’t come up with a search, or Alexa would have found it by voice, so I just ended up giving up and playing another station).

And this problem was first mentioned over 6 months ago (and wasn’t a problem previously, so its not like a brand new solution needs to be found, just a stupid update needs to be fixed).

So, basically, my Echo has become a $15 Bluetooth speaker, except not as good?

[jdb2]

An update on the particular manifestation of this problem w.r.t. me :

Previously, this problem was only affecting one of my Pandora stations, but now it seems it's affecting all of them and I can only get my Echo to play, via voice command, one of them.

Before a few days ago, I could tell my Echo(s) "Play my Pandora station [such-and-such]" and it would obey. The only station for which this didn't work was my "Darkwave Radio" station for which I had to say "Play Darkwave Radio from [my-name]'s Pandora." That hasn't changed, *but*, now when I try to get any of my other Pandora stations to play via voice command to my Echo(s), the Echo(s) instead play some random garbage stations of which I've never heard and no permutation or variation on the voice command I issue to my Echo(s) seems to solve the problem. So, it's gotten worse in my case.

Also, sometimes when I tell my Echo(s) to "Resume playback," one of my other Pandora stations will start to play, with my Echo responding with "Resuming Pandora", even though I had previously been listening to "Darkwave Radio."

It's ridiculous that Pandora has not only failed to fix these problems, but that they've gotten worse.

I don't know what to do -- I'm thinking about dropping Pandora like others in this thread.

jdb2

[tlange55]

This problem has been occurring for several months.   The skeptic in me is thinking that whatever partnership there is/was between Amazon and Pandora is disintegrating.   Has either of these companies acknowledged that they own this problem?   In the I/T world, if this type of problem has gone on this long, I suspect that jobs would have been lost.   Totally unacceptable to take this long for a fix.   The workaround is B.S.   Oh, and did I mention that Amazon has Amazon Music Unlimited?  😉  Shrewd marketing?   Welcome to the dark side on I/T thought.

[fcorral]

Agree, this is by far the worst customer support from both Pandora and Amazon, I have never seen an issue take this long, neither seems to care.  I have just given up on listening to Pandora on my Alexa at this point.