I think it would be fair to say that Pandora is like, the grandaddy of online streaming internet radio music players, right? I know I’ve been using it since ’05 or something–way before it was positioned as the uber-successful commercial enterprise it is today–and it has always been a service I lovelovelove.
But if you never really thought to look into how Pandora’s music selection mechanism works, you may not be getting the most accurate recommendations for your stations. In my experience, generally Pandora is servin up songs that fall into the same genre as the artist or tag I started a started a station with. But there are times when I am stopped dead in my tracks at the bizarr-o noises streaming into my ear-holes. Like, WTF Pandora? Your little “algorithm” is friggin possessed.
Enter my husband Jeffrey. Apparently, he has perfected the feedback method in order to teach Pandora exactly what to play. I’m still testing out his method, but he swears by just this one rule:
NEVER THUMBS UP, ALWAYS THUMBS DOWN
And really, it makes sense. Pandora’s algorithm is based on 400 “attributes” that categorize a song’s genre, tempo, syncopation, and the like. Whenever you rate (thumbs up/down) a song on one of your stations, Pandora doesn’t really know what it is about that song that you like. So it just guesses based on other songs you’ve rated and makes a recommendation for a song with some of the same attributes. It’s an algorithm, duh.
But if you are the type of listener who only “thumbs up” a song (or god forbid, never rates anything), all you are doing is giving Pandora a wider and wider set of attributes from which to make it’s recommendations. If all you do is “thumbs down” songs, over time you will teach Pandora exactly what it is you don’t like about certain songs. Ultimately, you will end up with a narrower variety of artists on your stations–and a MUCH greater likelihood that the songs played accurately meet your musical tastes.
If you are super-picky about your tunes or want your Pandora stations to be as accurate as possible, all thumbs down is the way to go.
xo Em
Thanks for sharing! I get the oddest songs on Pandora stations. For instance, last Friday I had my “swing radio” station on, but it kept playing classic rock. I hate to thumbs down Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, etc, but it wasn’t what I was looking for at the moment.
Can you thumbs down a certain song on a certain station without ramifications on your other stations?
Well, the hubs says you can. But just to be sure I select “transfer to another station” if it’s a song I like but don’t necessarily want on that station. :)
Thumbs-downing a song will not affect its play on any other station.
Can you play entire albums? I DO NOT like the shuffle on Pandora. I want to listen to my music without all the junk they throw in. How can I keep it from doing this? I’m gonna hafta find a way to hear my stuff or I’m in installing it for another app. Help!!!!!!!
Then get some other “app.” Does your favorite radio station play full albums? What makes you think any “free station/app” is a substitute for purchasing your own music collection?
Where did you come from? You just jumped into this forum to be rude so you can feel superior? Rude and ignorant you are.
I don’t think he was being rude at all. I think he gave the honest truth. Pandora or any other free radio app will NOT just play what you want. If you wanna hear what you wanna hear then you gotta pay for it
Pandora always shuffles. It’s basically a more personalized radio station for you. I like it because I get to hear new music as well as old favorites. But I completely understand wanting to hear specific music at times. To do that I would recommend Spotify for your listening pleasure. It lets you build your own playlists.
There’s one problem with giving thumbs down. There’s apparently a Pandora licensing limit to the number of skips you can make.
Historical thumbs down does not cause a skip and does not count against the number of skips. Of course this means you have to listen to the song all the way trough.
I think it worked
FYI, found this interesting, had been doing an experiment myself and referenced this. What I found:
So I’ve been giving this some thought, largely because I’d like a Weird Al station to play Weird Al and nothing else.
At first I started using Pandora the way it was ‘meant’ to be used, I suppose, and was ‘liking’ parody songs to increase the likelihood of Weird Al actually playing. This was incredibly unsuccessful and I ended up getting all this stand up comedy in the car which I really don’t feel like blasting at 100+dB while commuting. (The whole purpose of the Weird Al station, to make commuting fun amirite?)
Then I read the attached article and things got interesting. Through the web site you can do a lot of tweaking to a station including removing the previous +s and -s you’ve logged. I removed all of the +s and left only -s and the results at this point were actually quite baffling. The station would no longer play Weird Al whatsoever.
So I decided to take it a step further and sat on my Roku box thumbs-downing everything on the Weird Al station that was not playing any Weird Al anyway, toggling between stations leaving the other one alone.
Now my account is locked, which I sort of saw coming. I’m curious at this point as to whether I was shut off manually or automatically, however. I have noticed that with my Pandora One account I can have seemingly infinite devices streaming different stuff at the same time and they don’t seem to give a shit about but when you start skipping a lot just to tweak a station because of their limited feature set, they get mad. Heh.
Gave up on Pandora when I discovered Spotify..you turning back! It’s great!
It’s playing a lot more Weird Al after my account became unlocked.
If rate every song every time, then it doesn’t matter which direction the thumb points. Do this until you have at least 1000 likes, while Pandora will pretty much play only those songs. Begin to accept that new songs come in every once in a while, continue to rate each new song as they rarely surface. Next, you will be introduced to songs from a much broader spectrum that you actually like. Exit, even though you came into listening to music narrow minded will now have a better understanding for what you like in a song.
I appreciate the comment about the thumbs down, i’m going to try it. do you know if there is a way to categorize music, so that when I want to hear a certain type, such as Christian, Romantic, Old Rock, it will shuffle between the artists in that category only?
There’s not really a way to have it only play certain artists, but there IS a genre feature. When you create a new station, you can type “classic rock” in the box and it will list for you that genre. There are several Christian genres listed as well. They even have some very specific genres: “Laid Back Beach Music”, for instance.
If you can’t find the genre you want, what I’ve done is this:
1. find a few songs that typify romantic songs (as an example). Remember you may not want to pick your absolute favorites, but those that really have the most aspects that typify romantic songs. I usually try to pick some that do have some differences, but still remain well within the category you want.
2. As you listen, thumbs down any songs that don’t fit your type for that station. It will get better and better, gradually.
3. If you thumbs-down two songs from the same artist, it will ban that artist from that station (and only that station). So if you know that artist has other songs that you know DO fit romantic songs, you’ll need to add one of those romantic songs as a seed song (through the “details” page for that station), and that will remove the ban from that artist.
4. As you thumbs-down songs, at first, you may reach your limit quickly. I just switch to another station that I’ve tuned well and listen to it for an hour or so until my number of thumbs-downs rebuilds.
5. If you’ve thumbed-down 50 or so songs and it’s not shaping up, try adding another romantic seed song or thumbs-up one that you think is right on track with what you want.
Pandora shows the attributes for what you listen to, and you can add variety by song and artist, but can you make a station based on specific attribute selection?
I wish you could. But no, not that I know of.
Bad idea.
If you thumb down the same artist twice (and that artist isn’t defined as a song seed), that artist gets banned from your station and will not get played again.
So only thumbing down will prevent Pandora from playing artists that you like.
On the other hand, don’t be ashamed to thumb down.
But if you don’t seed an artist and there are two different songs from them that you dislike isn’t it a good indication that you dislike them?
No, not exactly. Otherwise, it would mean I don’t like… *any* artist. It would mean I don’t like Led Zeppelin; I don’t like Avenged Sevenfold; I don’t like Five Finger Death Punch; I I don’t like Disturbed; I don’t like Howlin’ Wolf; I don’t like Elmore James; I don’t like even Jimmy Reed (due to that one clunker album he has)… when, of course, that ain’t true at all. I love all of those artists a lot, but it don’t mean I like every singer song they ever put out.
Oops, never mind! Skipped the part about not being seeded – and I *do* have every single one of those artists seeded… on the same station, no less.
Not if you just don’t like one particular album. For example, I love the first two Linkin Park albums but don’t care much for any of the band’s newer stuff
“Did you just rate a song the wrong way accidentally? You can fix it easily by going to the arrow next to the name of your station and clicking Edit this station.”
You can overcome an artist ban (caused by Thumbs-Downing two songs by that artist on a station) by adding the artist as a seed for your station. This way, thumbs-downing will only ban the song and the qualities of that song.
or better yet… thumbs up a song of theirs that really typifies what you want on that station.
Does anyone other than me think the music selection on Friday is much better than M-T.
I listen an hour or so in the afternoon while I’m at work. Friday always seem to be the best.
Perhaps music seems better on Friday because it is so close to the weekend and weekends are great. Even a cold sore seems nicer on a Friday than on a Monday.
That gave me a laugh but so true. Everything is better on Friday.
I like classic rock and made several stations to maximize the 70s and early 80s, with a smattering of 60s… It seems to play the stuff I like, but for some reason Pandora REALLY loves playing stuff recorded live… I HATE live stuff… But it seems the more I thumbs down the live tracks, the more other live crap they come up with!
It’s frustrating! Since live is just a subset of music they should just have a setting “block all live tracks”!
THIS!!! Haha. I came here by asking Google how to block live songs on Pandora :)
hey, me too. I hate most all live albums (showed my age there didn’t I?) :)
I think your name shows your age more so. 28-35 is my guess. And yes, It takes a few hours to record a live album. It takes weeks, months, or sometimes years to polish even one song to studio quality. So live albums are the cheap way to make a buck in the music industry. I’m sure they don’t cost as much to Pandora to actually play either. Bottom line: Even if Pandora likes them, I don’t like them in the same way I don’t like laugh tracks on poorly written comedy sitcoms… I also don’t like poorly written comedy sitcoms… or excessive use of ellipses… I’m rather disagreeable.
I don’t do either. I just tell Panodra I’m tired of a track. That puts it on the shelf for, i believe 3 months.
Not so….. I have a “Classic Rock” station but I don’t have much afinity for CCR, yet even after more than a year has passed, Pandora still finds an occasional CCR song that I’ve yet to “thumb down” and throws it into the mix.
Why must I endure Adam Ant on my Clash channel? The only attributes they share is the decade they became popular. I reject Adam every single time he comes on. .. and he keeps returning. Day after day after day on my 1- hour commute. He has no “ups” and has never been seeded.
The “2 strikes and gone” rule is a myth.
It took me almost two years of messing with Pandora but I managed to change a Metallica station into one that only plays crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. There was no point to it, just did it to see if I could.
You can’t delete the artist that you used to create the station with, though – can you?
This is awesome.
My hero :)
Is there a way to add ONE artist to a station and not get a bunch of other junk. I have a “soft rock” station created that plays mostly 70s and 60s stuff. But I also like Tori Amos, so I want it to play her songs once in a while. Does adding her name, however, stick me with a bunch of 90s music?
In short, no easy way. You’ll have to tune it.
I wold add one of her soft rock songs as a seed first. Then you’ll have to thumbs down the 90s stuff that pops up. Eventually, it should get better.
I wish I could get it to stop playing “hits” from the artist. From my reading the above posts, thumbing the hits down just shuts out the artist.
I wonder if there is any way to see past post no longer shown they disappear into cyber space after so many are made and can’t be retrieved
Pandora’s goal is to show you new music so why?
I can’t figure out why Pandora plays album songs of one of my shuffle groups and not from another group. I’ll tell you the groups; I’m not ashamed. Steely Dan and Chicago. (I have other groups in the shuffle, too) I get lots of non-radio Dan tunes, for which I’m grateful. Even though I own nearly everything they ever recorded, I enjoy the apparent random-ness of Pandora. But I really like much of Chicago’s early stuff, especially tunes that are NOT on the “best of” albums. However, Pandora will not play the non-best-ofs. Should I include a specific album or even song from one of those albums?
So here’s the variation that has been driving me crazy. I play Joni Mitchell station and get way too much 1970-80s crap. I won’t mind Sarah Mclachlan but i don’t want Rod Stewart. I play Linda Ronstadt and get a ton of British invasion stuff (Pink Floyd etc). I love all kinds of music but not Traffic 24/7. I figure they must be getting tons of air time for cheap. I thumbs down all the time but it never seems to increase the person the station is named after. Wouldn’t a thumbs up increase the artist who the station is named after?
I listen to New Age-type music for background while I’m working (at home). I find it enhances focus and creativity. One thing I tend not like is solo or particularly dominant, heavy-handed piano, which I invariably TD. And yet it’s not unusual for Pandora to play one solo piano after another as I TD every one of these until I’ve exceeded the license restrictions. In that case I’ll go to another station or turn Pandora off altogether and put on a more palatable CD. In contrast to the TD advice at the start of this blog, something that seems to work for me (unless it’s sheer coincidence) is to TU a particular song I love multiple times as it’s playing (I can only do this with my Grace device – on my computer it just toggles the TU off and on). For some reason after this, Pandora will play exquisite melodies, which I’ll just keep thumbing up. I’d be happy to subscribe if Pandora would improve the listener feedback to allow a 1 (worst) to 10 (outstanding) rating scale and even allow us to specify the instruments or type of orchestration we’d like played.
listen people, just go with Spotify. they accurately beat match songs from your stations and playlists automatically. plus, you can listen to mixes already basically made and add or remove your own songs for a seamless transition. you can’t do that with Pandora.
Hey, folks, I’m back. After having used Pandora for over a year, now – and have gotten used to how things work – I’ve finally decided to put this idea to work.
First off, it probably works best if you stick with one genre. I really like rock and blues – and, on most of the stations, I like to combine the two. It’s not like I’m combining, say, hip-hop and country. Rock and blues very much are related genres.
Anyway, I created a station for this project – and settled on blues, since I’m a bit more into that genre these days. I’ve seeded pretty much all the blues artists I like. The only ones I didn’t seed are the blues artists who only have one or a few songs on Pandora, and I like them all – so adding them would be a bit redundant.
I also know, from previous efforts, that it can take a few months to get a multi-seeded station under control. It has 50 blues artists on there, so I expect it’ll probably take about another month to weed out all the stuff that I don’t like.
Trying to throw in a few rock artists seeds would probably be a bad idea, since it generally doesn’t mix seamlessly. At least, not for a long time.
For the other stations, I pretty much just rate every song – and then, eventually, it plays pretty much just what I like… with only the occasional new song thrown in. It seems to go a bit more quickly on stations seeded with a rock artist seed, than on stations seeded with a blues artist seed.
I have a “Three Days Grace” Pandora station which for the most part gives me a great selection of music. I always Thumbs Up the songs i like and Thumb down the ones I don’t. But almost every day when I first turn it on it will play a kanye West song and some country song. i Always thumb these down immediately, but every day this occurs up at least once. Any ideas?
Thanks. This is a bit frustrating as I often thumbs up songs I like in order to save them because I won’t remember and don’t have time to copy down the title/artist. But yeah, I’ve been also frustrated with the way it chooses songs. However, it seems to choose an ever-wider variety of music regardless of whether I thumbs up or down anything at all. Particularly if I put on a foreign language channel. Pandora doesn’t seem to have much music in its playlists aside from English and Spanish. So those are the only languages I have been able to consistently get any station to play a majority of. Okay, there’s like one French station that plays MAYBE 50% French, but even that one has slowly shifted to be more and more English and Spanish. Tiziano Ferro is an Italian singer who sings in both Italian and Spanish. I put him on and the first song or two is in Italian and then I don’t hear Italian again for hours upon hours of playing this station…. like maybe a few days later when I put the station on again, the first song is in Italian and then it’s just Spanish Spanish Spanish. Haven’t found any other stations that play Italian at all except I think there was maybe one opera channel that played a few, but I don’t like to listen to opera much.
Okay so today I put on Maitre Gims for the first time. I know I did not thumb up or down anything until I got home and switched to my laptop because I was on the updated iphone app which I haven’t figured out how to thumb up or down on and don’t think it has that feature at all. So it plays straight French songs my entire commute home which is like 45-50 minutes. I was like “YESSSSSSS FINALLY a station that plays only/mostly French!!!!!” It was amazing. I was so happy. Then I get home and as soon as I switch to my laptop – nothing but English. I was playing THAT for about 40 minutes and I think there was like ONE song that was in French, and it was half in English. During this time, maybe halfway through, I thumbed up a couple songs. So that may have affected it. One was the half-French song. Still, even before that I was just skipping songs until I couldn’t anymore because they were ALL ENGLISH. So frustrating. I also thumbed down like 5 songs during this time. Now I just put this station back on, about 40 minutes later and it’s again playing an English song. Great. How do I get it to play mostly French?! I actually wonder if they just front-load the French songs and it turns out those are the only French songs in their entire database that fit the criteria. I also wonder if switching to my laptop had something to do with it.
Sigh.