3C
Opening Act
| Created | Tier | Playlists | Stations | Thumbs | Music hours | Podcast hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1/15/2006 | PLUS | 6 | 41 | 1706 | 30021 | 0 |
A few other observations; Changes I make to Station A, or just the mere fact that I listened to Station A, will influence the song suggestions I start getting on Station B. I have separate stations for a reason. If you can change the algorithm so it does not bleed across stations that would be very helpful If a song is not thumbs-up'd or thumbs-down'd, it appears to repeat at a much higher frequency than other songs. This is annoying. I haven't graded it for a reason
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Let's start with the obvious... Pandora today is not the Pandora I joined in 2006. The algorithm for song selection has changed, and this change has led to some adverse effects for a lot of users. A quick scroll through the community will reveal inappropriate song selection and high repetition as two primary issues
Please do not move this to one of those threads
I suspect the high repetition is simple economics - Pandora only wants to pay so many royalties on your behalf, so they limit the number of individual songs played on your station. It would be nice if Pandora was a little more up front about this, but I am not really expecting that.
So let's talk about inappropriate song selections
(again, please don't move this to one of those threads)
I know the algorithm has changed, and not for the better. One of my first stations used to play a very wide variety of music, and now it plays Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, and Sting/Police in almost perfect rotation over and over again. I have changed nothing with the seed songs in many years.
If I follow the history of Pandora correctly, the music genome project has essentially died. It was very resource-intensive and not particularly cost-effective, particularly when you throw increasing royalty costs into the mix.
What I suspect is that Pandora songs are no longer being classified at the song level. Instead, when you select a song (by seed or thumbs-up), you are getting associations made at the album and artist level tied to your station. These associations may have adverse results if you selected that song because it has something different about its sound compared to the rest of the album, and I think this is the trap that most old-school Pandora users are falling into.
If the economics to classify things at the song level aren't really there, there is still a simple fix to avoid problems. If I thumbs-up ONE song from an album/artist, and thumbs-down the next two... leave that song on my station, but make no associations. Let it play, but do not let it influence further selections.
Give it a shot. It will probably work a lot better than walking users through surgically removing seed songs
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As time goes on, I am beginning to suspect that the Pandora algorithm is constantly trying to push me off of the sound I am trying to create for my station and push me into a pre-canned genre. I almost never consistently get new songs that are appropriate for my station, and instead appear to get hammered with standard genre selections that are somehow mysteriously tied to my seed songs or thumbs-ups. I to date have not seen a realistic solution to the general issue of the wrong songs being played on stations
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The title of your station is a hyperlink. If you click on the title, it will take you from 'now playing' mode to a detail page for your station. From the detail page, you can see lists of your seed songs, thumbs-up'd songs, and thumbs-down'd songs. From here, you can remove songs from any of the lists
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You can go back and 'unclick' the thumbs down. If it has been awhile, you can go into your station and remove the song from your thumbs down list
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It seems to be part of this problem that these bands we get hammered with the entire playlist of are annoying and bad fits for the stations in question I am beginning to suspect that either (a) Pandora gets compensation for hammering us with certain specific artists/albums and/or (b) Pandora is using you and your station to evaluate these artists/albums for type. If you are organized enough that your station actually has a 'sound' and 'theme' to it (I am not a music theory expert), Pandora may be using your thumbs-downs (and ups) to classify music Either (a) or (b) would be a pretty good explanation for why there doesn't seem to be a lot of traction on solving a problem that seems pretty easy to solve
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There seems to be two separate issues here - One is the general request to be able to block artists or albums from a specific station. Pandora does not appear to have made a decision on implementing this feature yet. The second related issue is that Pandora will run the entire catalog of an artist that is clearly not a fit for a given station, and you wind up having to thumbs-down every stinking one of them, and the algorithm doesn't seem to be capable of grasping that I don't want Procol Harem on my electronic music station after 30 thumbs-downed songs. This is just one example, but I do not have them in my seed songs on any of my stations, and have never thumbs-uped one of their songs... ever
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First I would like to start of by saying I am generally happy with Pandora and have been a member for many years, but... there are things that defy my understanding given the amount of research Pandora has performed on music I do not have a high level of understanding of music theory, but I try to tune my stations to a 'sound' (whatever that translates into in music theory). I always reach a critical mass of number of 'thumbed-up' tracks on a station where I seem to just stop receiving new relevant, applicable music selections. This critical mass seems way too small given the total population of songs in the Pandora library. I am just not convinced that I found them all - not by a long shot I also get sent massive numbers of song suggestions that are in no way, shape, or form relevant to the station in question. The ratio tends to be 20-1 to 30-1 some days, and this seems odd given the amount of data Pandora presumably has on music. In some cases, I will need to thumbs-down every available song by a given artist or album before they stop getting sent to my station Also, just because I have a prog-rock station does not mean I want prog-rock suggestions for my electronic station I have seen and participated in a number of posts related to these topics, so they seem to be somewhat widespread with no clear global solution. This is all meant to be constructive for future development, but I would be interested in any feedback on the topic
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So I understand that two thumbs downs (I believe on the same album) will ban an artist from your station. What happens if you already thumbs-upped a song from said artist, then thumbs-down the same artist twice? What happens if you only like one song from a particular album from a given artist and hate the rest?
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