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Chromecast: Unable to cast to Google Home Devices

aidane33
Local Performer

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

Labels (1)
90 Replies

Rjboles
Underground

I never received a resolution to this, but it resolved itself in a day or two. And today... IT'S BACK! Cut off in the middle of a song and stopped playing. I gave a voice command, and received the dreaded, and inaccurate, "Pandora is playing right now." I did nothing to trigger this. My account didn't change, etc. I can stream on my device, I can cast to my device, but, like before, can't voice command it. If this continues to happen, I'll just have to cancel and try someone else. Would be less bitchy about if Pandora had any form of customer support whatsoever.

0 Kudos

Pit107
Opening Act

Upgraded my chromecast to a Google TV chromecast today and, unsurprisingly, like getting a new phone, getting a new chromecast did not resolve the issue.

0 Kudos

Mookpsu
Opening Act

Nope, I have the same device didn't solve the problem. If Pandora doesn't want to fix this problem that's fine, it's their prerogative but then they need to stop advertising it as being Chromecast compatable! 

Beatsmom
Local Performer

Same thing happened to me when I switch Pandora plans. I've tried all the solutions, none of them worked. So annoying I can no longer cast.

Usysinc
Opening Act
1. Ascertain that you are using a cast profile associated with a single
email address.
2. In the Hone app, select the speaker group and tap the cast button.
3. Open your Pandira app, select your station and tap the Play button
4. If music does not play on your speakers in synchronization then tap the
cast icon at the lower right hand corner of the screen and then select the
appropriate speaker or speaker group
5. Your music should now be playing
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Mookpsu
Opening Act

The issue is not related to Google Home speakers, it's with the Chromecast dongle. I'm old school, my TV is connected to my stereo system so it's my primary source for listening to music. For years I was able to cast Pandora from my phone or table, once I upgraded to Pandora Plus, that went away. If Pandora doesn't want to play nice with Google anymore that's fine but stop advertising that you are Chromecast compatible when you're clearly not!

0 Kudos

Rjboles
Underground

Issue resolved. I removed Pandira account from Google Home, Saved, Re-linked my account to Google Home. All fixed. 

0 Kudos

Stefen522
Local Performer

Add me to the list of frustrated beyond belief long time Pandora customers who is now bitter and angry at Pandora for not being able to fix this with all the revenue they clearly scrape from artists- they could at least pay some software developers to fix what is obviously not an isolated issue. I have used Pandora for years without issue. Now when trying to cast, it tells me “oops we can’t do that right now”. I just want to listen to my Christmas music on better speakers than my phone speakers. 

yottabit
Underground

Is anyone at Pandora aware that casting from the app on Android is broken?

I have tried from a Pixel 4a and Pixel 6 Pro.

I have tried to Nest Hub (2nd gen), Google Home, and Chromecast Ultra.

I have tried on two separate networks using different Internet providers.

After selecting the target device, I hear the chime on the target device, and then immediately afterward the app shows a toast: "Your session with device has ended." The playback is left in a stuck state where the play/pause button is grayed out.

One of the reasons I left Deezer was that their casting support was downright awful. Is Pandora even worse?

I can't cast to any devices. I have tried Nest Hub (2nd gen), Google Home, and Chromecast Ultra. I have tried from Pixel 4a and Pixel 6 Pro. I have tried on two different networks with different ISPs.

I have a Premium subscrption.

One of the reasons I left Deezer was because of their awful cast support. Is Pandora worse? Sigh.

glyndon
Opening Act

Seems there are several threads on here with the same complaint.

Acknowledged by someone who seems to be with Pandora - may just be a bot - but weeks, months, maybe years have gone by with no change.


As the lady in the famous old Wendy's commercial said: "I don't think there's anybody back there..."

yottabit
Underground

Yeah, did some more searching while I was opening a trouble ticket with support. I ended up linking them to 4 of the long threads about this problem that they haven't fixed for 1+ years.

Support asked me the usual stuff: are you on wifi? did you reboot your router? did you reboot your casting device? did you factory default your casting device? did you force close the pandora app? are you on the latest pandora app version? What is your phone model, software version, carrier, blah blah blah. Useless.

I already supplied them all the info they needed in the original contact. But I dutifully answered all their questions, waiting on third response now.

But it's too late. After I saw that so many people were having casting problems for so long, I bailed. My poor kids will stay on Pandora free with ads since I can't get their under-13 accounts to work on Spotify. But my wife and I have switched to a Spotify family plan now.

I subscribed to Pandora One for years, and moved to Google Play Music after Pandora had become stagnant and not updated their streaming quality, etc. After the demise of GPM I moved to Deezer since the under-13 accounts won't work with YouTube Music (among other issues I had with YTM).  But Deezer is so slow and also has casting bugs (although not nearly as severe as Pandora). Spotify just works perfectly with everything, and is fast, and sounds great; if only they supported under-13 accounts properly (without their awful kid mode).

Oh well, Pandora's loss. As my kids turn 13 I'll add them to my Spotify plan, and then Pandora won't even get the ad revenue.

yottabit
Underground

Pandora seems like a hot mess at the moment. I opened 4 support tickets in as many days, for various things not working correctly, including receiving ads on a Premium subscription account.

I can't even get to this community forum via their direct link as I get an "auth token invalidated" error message. I have to use Google Search to get to this community forum! That would be the fifth bug/ticket but I'm done, so I'm not going to open it.

They said "they're working on it" re. my casting ticket. It's ticket# 03994514, in case anyone in the future wants to reference it.

Good luck!

Mookpsu
Opening Act

I've been waiting to hear back since September regarding this issue. Apparently their engineers work really slow

Moderator Edit: Image removed

Iguana-PR
Underground

I have been able to maybe 50% of the time cast to my chromecast dongle.  What I do, I start Pandora streaming any song/station and the cast to the chromecast, as expected, the TV just freezes with the blue Pandora screen.  Then I exit Pandora with the home button, kill the app with the task menu and open Pandora again.  Then Pandora gives a message that says "Reconnecting to casting device" and about 50% of the time it works.  This is on my Galaxy S21 with Android 12.

 

I'm just about given up and if it wasn't for my curated stations and playlists, I would have jumped Pandora a long time ago. 

 

I mean, this problem has been know for months/years and I just wonder how hard it really is to solve.  Pandora, I am about to give up my premium membership and switch to Spotify since listing to music on my TV/Audio system should not be this hard/frustrated.

Mookpsu
Opening Act

If you upgrade to the Chromecast w/ Google TV dongle you can access your Pandora acct through the app. Unfortunately you still won't have the ability to start listening on your phone and then transfer to your TV since they obviously have no interest in fixing the cast issue for Plus & Premium subscribers. Spotify isn't much better. Casting is flawless but their auto sync across devices cannot be turned off despite subscribers begging for the ability to do so. And Amazon music's app no longer saves your playlist progress once you stop listening and no longer connects to Chromecast as well. Long story short, they all love collecting our money every month but don't care about their customer's complaints

Usysinc
Opening Act
Apparently Chromecast utilizes two different modes of casting. One mode
enables Pandora to cast directly from the app, while the other mode casts
the phone screen or whatever app is currently filling the focus on the
screen to the Chromecast devices.

Hitster
Local Performer

Any luck with this issue I have had same issue and am also tech savvy! Spotify works great with Google Home but I prefer the Pandora playlists. Have thought of quitting Pandora several times because of this and then it resolves itself… VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

—————————-

I have had this same issue for years! It usually resolves itself and will work fine for a month or two but then bam all over again. It's extremely frustrating. I prefer to cast directly from the Pandora app versus Google Home voice controls as I have more control over music, stations etc, however when Pandora app won't cast I begrudgingly use GH as it always work. Right now however I am having issues with that. I am tech savvy guy and have tried all of the troubleshooting, unlinking/linking devices, accounts etc.  When it works it's great as I have a mix of devices all over the house (2 Vizio sound bars, JBL portable, and a couple minis). I don't want to leave Pandora as I have all my stations finely tuned but if Spotify works perfectly I may be making the switch very soon. 

Mookpsu
Opening Act

I recently switched to Live One (the old Slacker Radio) and couldn't be happier. They were doing a $15.99/yr promotion for their plus membership and while it took some time recreating my Pandora custom stations it seems to be time while spent. It works beautifully with Chromecast and does a much better job with shuffling your stations and digging deep into each artists catalogue. It's been a little over a week and I'm already to drop Pandora once my current subscription runs out

 

rktchip
Underground

I have this same problem. Every music service would cast when I asked it to from Google Home, except Pandora, which whould show the song trying to play as playing (not paused).. but no audio and the song time counter doesn't move. (As seen from my Chromecast with Google TV and Google Home app).

Google Home, Android phones, lots of Chromecast speakers in grips e, and also added Chromecast with Google TV.

 

I just got mine working.  I'm not sure what did it, but maybe this will help someone. 

And no, it's not unlinking and linking the account like this thread is marked as fixed.

 

Here is what I did:

 

Android phone:

1. Force Stop and Clear Pandora cache and data.

2. Uninstall Pandora

3. Google Home, unlink Pandora service

4. Google Settings, Passwords, remove the saved Accounts for Pandora (this was interesting because my phone always tried to auto populate the password for auto sign in . After I cleared this, I got a different Pandora sign in and different Link to Google screens than I had ever seen before )

5. Reinstall Pandora

6. Open Pandora and sign in ( note I saw a new login screen )

7.  Opened Google Home, an initiated the Pandora Link Account ( note I saw a different Link you account screen )

8. At this point, my Google Home would play Pandora again,  Except for my Chromecast with Google TV would not play when it's a speaker in a speaker group.

9. Also super random, the buttons on my Google Home to skip songs finally worked again. Those had been grayed out for over a year.

After the above

Chromecast with Google TV:

1. Force Stop Chromecast ( go to show system Apps )

2. Clear Chromecast app cache and data

3. Check Chromecast App permissions, I enabled the 3 it was asking for.

4. Open the Pandora app on Chromecast with Google TV and test it plays

5. Test asking my Google Home to play Pandora to a speaker group that includes the Chromecast with Google TV and another speaker. 

 

We'll see if my issue is fixed long term. If not, I'll update with a failure note or confirmation if these steps fixed my issue again. I'm ready to cancel Pandora.

Also, side note, when I was clearing the Google settings saved password for Pandora, I also saw the setting to turn on and off Google setting for apps that can automatically restore/sync data or configuration. I didn't change that but I was planning to come back and try toggling that if I didn't have success.

 

 

Mookpsu
Opening Act
That seems like way too much work for something they advertise as being
compatible with Chromecast!