HomePod - Siri doesn't recognize custom station names

[mcP]

I’ve followed the prescribed steps to connect Pandora to my HomePod minis. (All apps and OSs are up to date and the devices have been rebooted.) When I ask Siri (through the HomePod) to play a station based on a random artist, it works fine. When I ask to play one of my custom stations (which have custom names such as “Maddie’s Favorites” or “Everyday Fun”) the station names are never recognized. Instead I get a station based on some hilarious/frustrating interpretation of a band unrelated to my station. After many attempts (sometimes using “radio” or “station” after the name) I cannot get the HomePod to play one of my curated stations via Siri.  What am I doing wrong?

Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity

[TannerPandora]

Hey @mcP! Thanks for posting. 

Sounds like you're doing everything right. I'm going to create a ticket so that we can take a closer look at what may be happening. 

Can you let me know which version your HomePod is running on?

Thanks!

[mcP]

Thanks for taking a look. The HomePods are running version 14.2. iOS is at 14.2.1. Pandora is at 2010.1.1

[TannerPandora]

No problem, @mcP! I'll follow up as soon as I hear back. 

[mcP]

Any feedback from the product team on this? Acknowledge it’s a problem? Intend to fix?

[TannerPandora]

Hi @mcP! Thanks for reaching out. 

I checked-in and Siri should acknowledge custom station names so this does appear to be a bug. However, they are still investigating the cause behind it. 

Thanks for your continued patience and sorry for any inconvenience. 

[BMeek]

I’ve also been running Pandora “on the HomePod” with Siri “control” :-).  My HomePod mini has recently updated to 14.3 and become part of a stereo pair since I first “connected Pandora” to it a few weeks ago.

I’ve noticed that Siri takes liberties in selecting a Pandora station based on what’s requested.   Sometimes that’s good.  I ask “Hey Siri, play Vivaldi radio on Pandora”.  Siri says something like “playing Antonio Vivaldi radio on Pandora” (and it plays).  Kudos to Siri/Pandora for doing what I meant, not what I said.

Other times, it’s annoying.  Me: “...play Dave Brubeck radio”. Siri: “playing Dave Brubeck Holiday radio...”.  Me: “NOOO!!!”.  Shame on Siri/Pandora for bypassing the actual Station in My Collection called “Dave Brubeck [radio]” (sans the Holiday), and somehow finding a holiday variant to inflict upon me.  Another time, I asked “Play some acoustic instrumentals on Pandora” and Siri/Pandora played “Holiday Instrumentals”.  I then tried “Hey Siri, play some acoustic instrumentals on Apple Music” and Siri/AppleMusic cheerfully said “playing ‘Chill Guitar’ on Apple Music”.  I’m not channeling Scrooge here, but Siri/Pandora is queuing up music I’m not asking for with the holiday tunes.

With Pandora on HomePod, and specifically because of it, I’ve moved my 10-year-old subscription from what’s now called “Pandora Plus” to Premium, and I’ve set Pandora as the default “Play Music” service over Apple’s.  With the Premium Subscription and HomePod, I can now successfully tell Siri “play the album Who’s Next” and it starts playing the opening notes of Baba O’Riley (the first cut on the old LP), or I can say “play The Who radio”, and I’m hearing my own well-thumbed station.  So, I’m hopeful that Pandora’s HomePod team will make this encouraging implementation great.  It needs a better handle on distinguishing specific requests (station, song, album, playlist, etc) from more vague requests and even whimsical genre/mood music requests.  Good luck with that :-).

[LilDragon]

Hello, I just got a HomePod, upgraded my membership from PandoraPlus to Premium, and have this same issue. I cannot play a custom station, even though I have connected my Pandora to HomePod and specifically request it by saying “Hey Siri, play Relaxation and Sleep on Pandora.” 
My phone allows me to use a Siri shortcut to “Play Relaxation and Sleep,” and it will automatically play my Pandora station. Since HomePod won’t pick up on this same command, even when adding “on Pandora,” I have to airplay from my phone to the HomePod. 

If this isn’t an available feature, I feel like I wasted time and money on upgrading my Pandora station, when I could have kept it as PandoraPlus. 

Please work on making this a *working* feature. Thank you 

- Eddie

[Lfstrat]

Having a little bit of the same issue. I cannot get Pandora to shuffle my stations when using Siri on the HomePod mini. For some reason, it always picks one of the stations in my list rather than shuffling all of them. I have to go back to the phone and use the mini as a Bluetooth speaker. 

[Redcat]

Bumping this. Apple homepod mini version 17.2 here, with same issue of not being able to use custom station names in Pandora (but my iPhone Siri can…).

Looks like Pandora tech support has abandoned us, and/or is gaslighting us?

[BMeek]

I got notified of a like & a post here so I thought I would check in...  

I hope Pandora keeps working on this stuff - subscribers notice and app support makes a difference.  I've noticed that an old bug/non-feature on the Apple TV Pandora app was finally addressed in a 2023 update: it now supports AirPlay 2 properly and can do 'whole home audio' correctly!

In addition to making the Pandora code for HomePod more useful with Siri, I urge tighter integration with the iPhone Pandora app.  For example, the ability to 'handoff' a pandora session on iOS to a Pandora-enabled HomePod so that it actually continues playing on HomePod rather than via AirPlay from the iPhone.  I believe Apple has this working pretty well with Apple Music.

[Redcat · Accepted solution]

I have found a possible solution!!!!

I have two homepod (minis), and the following easy 2-step 1-hand 1-mouth solution appears to have worked.

1) First, ask your iPhone to play the channel, e.g. hold down the siri button and "play channel 2 on pandora." 

2) Then put the phone on top of the homepod, and it automatically switches to playing on the homepod speaker. This apparently permanently fixes the problem with the homepod speaker, at least for that chanel:  if you play some other pandora stuff, you can later say "hey siri, play channel 2 on pandora" and it will correctly play it!!

(At first I thought that the issue may have been resolved, when I noticed it suddenly working on my primary homepod. But today I noticed it not working on my secondary one. So I tried the above trick and presto it worked!!)

I hope that:

a) This will help future folks who come to this page looking for a solution, and 

b) This will help Pandora and Apple to identify and fix this bug.

[BMeek]

So, you think that establishing that AirPlay connection between your phone and the homepods will somehow fix Siri's vocabulary on the HomePods?

I haven't been bothered much by Siri HomePod Pandora misunderstandings, but they still happen.  I have a well-thumbed Pandora Station initially created from Neil Young's "Out On the Weekend" and is so-labeled "Out on the Weekend Radio".   Well, this f-ing instance of Pandora on HomePods heard my "Play Out on the Weekend Radio", and it creates another "Out on the Weekend (2019 Remaster)" station (grrr).

ALSO, Siri probably replied something like "Here's music INSPIRED BY 'Out on the Weekend Radio'".  This common response REALLY pisses me off, particularly when it's simply playing the requested station on Pandora as opposed to randomly creating a new station that I don't want.  I don't know if it's stupid Siri's fault or something in Pandora's Siri support code.  In any case, I hate that!