Chromecast: Unable to cast to Google Home Devices

[aidane33]

I recently changed my subscription to a family plan. Immediately after doing so, I am unable to play music from my Google Home with Pandora as my default player. I am also unable to cast from my iPhone XR to the Home device. When attempting to cast I get an error saying, “Oops, we are unable to cast at this time.” I tried unlinking and re-linking my Pandora account in the Google Home app but this did not make a difference. Help! This is the only way I listen to Pandora at home. 

Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity

[Bpwilliams76]

Hello!  I'm unable to cast the Pandora app from my Android phone to my Google home speakers after upgrading my account to plus. I've done as much troubleshooting as possible before posting here. 

I've unlinked Pandora from my Google home, uninstalled the Pandora app, reinstalled, relinked, cleared memory and cache from both apps, verified no battery saving was turned on for the Pandora app, rebooted the speakers and even factory reset one of them. I was able to cast to all of my speakers in the Pandora app with my free account. I can still cast to speakers that are not related to Google in my home. 

In the image below you can see that the app plays fine on my phone. 

When I attempt to connect to one of my Google speakers, it acts as though it's going to connect and I hear the chime on the speaker as though it did.

Then it takes me back to the currently playing screen and either won't allow me to play anything (next image) or just disconnects from the speaker giving an error message that my session with "speaker" has ended. (second image)

 

You can see in the next image, I'm able to cast to my sound bar via WiFi that is not Google branded.

 

Someone please help as I'm attempting to switch over to Pandora from Sirius XM. 

[cmorin543]

This has been happening to me for over a year and a half now.  Some days it will randomly start working perfectly. Then the next day does exactly as you described.  I reached out to both Google support and Pandora support.  Pandora said it's a known issue and continues to tell me to make sure my app is updated to the latest version and a fix will be released. 

[Mookpsu]

I've long since given up on them fixing this long standing issue, I now
give my money to Live One. They are just as good if not better than Pandora
and it works perfectly with Chromecast!

[KYSteve]

Well this problem is STILL HERE in 2023.  I have read all the threads and it will not play my paid subscription to my Google speaker groups.  It must be something that Pandora is doing to try to keep me from playing more than one stream.  I'm simply playing one stream to multiple speakers in one house. This is a User UNfriendly problem.  I have played my paid subscription to my house speaker groups for sometime now and I cannot get it to work to listen by telling OK Google to "Play Eagles Radio on All Speakers" It has worked for about the last 2 years.

I have tried all the resets and reboots that are suggested on the web to no avail.  t seems to have happened when I started getting the Enter Pin popup but I cannot find any real connection to that either. 

EDIT: It truly doesn't seem to be connected to the PIN box that pops up.  I don't have a google PIN and I am unaware of a Pandora PIN.

[Mookpsu]

There's a very simple fix to this issue, it's called Live One. I just finished my first year with them and couldn't be happier. Their plus version is only $2.99 a month and it's identical to what Pandora Plus offers. It took me a while to recreate all my custom stations but it was well worth it. Oh and unlike Pandora, it works perfectly with Chromecast!