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[EatinOlives]

I don't know if I'm using Pandora wrong, but whenever I create a station of a subgenre and I start getting the stream of artists I end up thumbing up about 5 or 6.

Then every time that I bring up that station I get those same artists over and over again. I have to listen to the station for like an hour before I get a new artist. Most of the time it just keeps playing the same set of 5/6 artists I originally thumbed up, even keeps playing the same albums from those same artists, just mixing up with songs from those albums they are.

Is this how Pandora is meant to work in general? I'm trying to discover new artists and songs but it's hard when I keep being fed the same damn artists/albums.

 

[Camp Lo]

In my experience that's how Pandora works, which is why I stopped using it a long time ago. It's about as bad as regular radio.

 

[The Lamonster]

seems like thumbs-down'ing is more effective at crafting a station you like.

 

[jay]

Because it sucks.

 

[EatinOlives]

Any recommendations for services that let me find new music/artists? I guess Pandora isn't it :/

 

[Otheradam]

As others have said, its because Pandora sucks. We have it on at work and even if I put something different but same catagory "rockish" it ends up on the same songs by the same artist that had nothing to do with the original band I put in.

 

[Krakatoa]

give spotify a shot.

 

[speculawyer]

Payola?

 

[lenovox1]

Any recommendations for services that let me find new music/artists? I guess Pandora isn't it :/

Try Rdio.

 

[number11]

Spotify > Pandora

 

[Bread]

Heh, that's why I like Pandora. I only use it to listen to the stuff I want to hear, I wish it would let me just listen to the 5 artists I typed in.

 

[TwntyOneTwlv]

give spotify a shot.

Spotify's radio service works exactly the same way - it always ends up with the same handful of artists no matter what. I'm very happy with Spotify and I love using it. Just not the radio feature.

 

[gutshot]

This has been my experience with Pandora too. I will even add an artist to the station and it will play their songs like once or twice during that session, and then never again.

When I had Google Music All Access, their radio was a million times better, giving me tons of new artists I'd never even heard of. Discovered more than a few great new bands through that. But I couldn't justify the cost and had to cancel. Wish Google had a free option like Spotify does where I could just use their radio feature.

 

[TheWarrior]

I try to add 4 or 5 bands from a similar genre and it adds a little more variety to the station. their preset stations kinda suck

 

[Omega]

Who knows..

I listen to Glitch Mob..I don't even know what genre they would be but I know they're completely different than Lindsey Stirling and her music keeps coming up.

I like her music but she plays a fucking violin. That has nothing similar to Glitch Mob, Pandora says it plays other similar artists.

 

[lenovox1]

This has been my experience with Pandora too.

When I had Google Music All Access, their radio was a million times better, giving me tons of new artists I'd never even heard of. Discovered more than a few great new bands through that. But I couldn't justify the cost and had to cancel. Wish Google had a free option like Spotify does where I could just use their radio feature.

You'd probably like iTunes Radio.

 

[Sol..]

Pandora doesn't have access to a bunch of music (like less than a million compared to like 15 million+ in other services) so if you make really specific stations you won't hear much variety.

iTunes Radio is a simple free alternative.

For paid services i'm told Beats Music has a pretty nice radio/auto-playlist algorithm. I use spotify, but isn't great.

 

[gutshot]

You'd probably like iTunes Radio.

Yeah, I would like to try it out but Apple sucks and has locked that shit down to iOS only and I don't have an iPhone.

 

[border]

Yeah, I have no idea what's going on with Pandora anymore.

When they started they were supposed to be helping you find music based on your own tastes, and based on a specific categorization method for each individual song. Their algorithms were designed to help you discover new music. Nowadays I think their algorithms are just designed to keep the biggest number of people happy -- which turns out is a lot like radio station programming.

Now when I start a station with the name of one artist, it gives me songs from other bands that have fuck-all to do with the artist I originally named the station for. Or just random crap from roughly the same era of music as what you wanted. I'm not sure why the QUEEN radio station won't stop playing Zeppellin, but it's annoying as hell to me since the two have so few similarities.

I think they paid a shitload of money for The Beatles and Led Zeppellin, so that's why they spam songs from them if you have a station for any rock artist from the 60's or 70's.

Pandora Stations feel very much like radio stations now. You hear only the hit singles, never deep cuts or obscure stuff. Start a station with David Bowie and it's basically like listening to the same 10 Bowie hits on shuffle, with a few other artists' singles sprinkled in between.

 

[lenovox1]

GAF's 'Album of the Year' threads are pretty awesome for that from my experience, but I know that's not what you're looking for. There's certain sites that allow you to choose artists and then propose others, but from my experience they don't work very well.

Rdio sounds decent for him. It sounds like he needs a service with a great, big collection, but he had niche tastes. I know for my tastes, Rdio is the best at finding new music based on what others with my listening habits like.

 

[Skittles]

Reminds me of my "The Prodigy" station.....it now plays swing music sometimes

 

[TheWarrior]

Reminds me of my "The Prodigy" station.....it now plays swing music sometimes

My Guns N Roses station played Elvis and Marvin Gaye

 

[Alcotholic]

I use "Songza" for music. It's pretty fucking spot on.
You guys should check it out if you don't know what it is.
It works far better than pandora, probably because it's all playlists, but they are really well thought out playlists.

www.songza.com

 

[Saucy_XL]

If I hear Lindsey Stirling one more time....

 

[kehs]

Limited pool.

 

[Dany]

Who knows..

I listen to Glitch Mob..I don't even know what genre they would be but I know they're completely different than Lindsey Stirling and her music keeps coming up.

I like her music but she plays a fucking violin. That has nothing similar to Glitch Mob, Pandora says it plays other similar artists.

Holy crap. Same. I love both lol. Glitch Mob and her are officially on my feed.

Maybe it's my fault for liking both of them that they now play in your station

 

[sixteen-bit]

Payola

 

[Barkley's Justice]

I don't know why anyone uses Pandora. It's such garbage compared to Spotify. I think people use Pandora out of habit.

 

[lenovox1]

I don't know why anyone uses Pandora. It's such garbage compared to Spotify. I think people use Pandora out of habit.

`('_')/` Even Slacker has a bigger connection.

 

[Frank Zappa]

Pandora?

That's why you use Spotify instead.

 

[The Real Abed]

I dumped Pandora when iTunes Radio came out. But even that likes to repeat songs.

I just listen to local iTunes music 99% of the time.

 

[Unicorn]

Last.FM for lyf

 

[Joe]

My experience with pandora is pretty great, I get new music from it all the time. My stations are highly tweaked though; I have almost 1000 thumbs up on songs, and about 500 thumbs down.

Edit: also use the "I'm tired of this track" option

 

[teruterubozu]

I use "Songza" for music. It's pretty fucking spot on.
You guys should check it out if you don't know what it is.
It works far better than pandora, probably because it's all playlists, but they are really well thought out playlists.

www.songza.com

I like Songza cuz they tell you exactly how many songs are in a channel. They're up front about their limited catalog.

I use all the free streaming stuff:

Songza
SomaFM
Pandora
DI.FM
Itunes Radio
Spotify
Slacker
Rdio
Iheart
TuneIn

They all have their ups and downs. I live to hear that 5-6 song block of algorithm MAGIC. It happens sometimes, but not often.

 

[BolognaSoup]

I've never understood the appeal of radio in the first place, MUCH less paid radio.

 

[Phineous_2]

I've been using Earbits a lot recently. There doesn't seem to be a deep pool of artists/songs per channel (so after an hour or so you've heard everything on some channels), but it's all stuff I've never heard before. Also free with no commercials, so there's that.

 

[Purple Cheeto]

I used to put in random artists on Pandora to see how long a station would take before it ended up on Coldplay. Seemed like everything from Jazz to Metal ended up there eventually.

Honestly though I've found that almost every streaming radio service seems to have only like 5-6 bands tops for any genre.

 

[lenovox1]

I used to put in random artists on Pandora to see how long a station would take before it ended up on Coldplay. Seemed like everything from Jazz to Metal ended up there eventually.

Honestly though I've found that almost every streaming radio service seems to have only like 5-6 bands tops for any genre.

Funnily enough, I have a Legally Blonde the Musical station that goes to Coldplay.

 

[beato_angelico]

use last.fm and listen to albums

 

[Baraka in the White House]

It's pretty much how Pandora works. It'll always manage to rotate the songs you hate but once you start thumbing music you end up with a typical FM Top 40 station.

 

[sangreal]

I'm just happy when Pandora doesn't give me random stand-up comedy bits

 

[Doctoglethorpe]

Add more bands/songs/genres to your seed list. Pandora needs a bit of variety to work with it seems. When I make a station based on one seed that does happen, but when I have a handful of seeds the song count on the station skyrockets.

 

[animus82]

I don't know why anyone uses Pandora. It's such garbage compared to Spotify. I think people use Pandora out of habit.

IMO people use Pandora because they don't put in enough effort into their own musical tastes.

"I dunno what to listen tooo..... someone please tell me what's good and what I should listen. No! I don't want to develop my own musical tastes."

I hate this sort of thinking and never use any of the Radio apps because are all behave similar to Pandora.