# How the hell does Pandora work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [July 23, 2024, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654 "2024-07-23T04:48:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FlikTheBlue](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fliktheblue/32/10972_2.png) [@FlikTheBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FlikTheBlue)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/41 "2024-07-24T13:10:46Z")
My experience with Pandora was also frustrating. I’d thumb down a song, let’s say _Hotel California_ from the original album, only to have it come up again later as _Hotel California_ from the Eagles Greatest Hits or some such thing, and after a thumbs down on that one it would come up again as part of The Greatest Hits of the 70s or some such thing. The algorithm they use, at least back when I used Pandora, was completely useless. \*. _Hotel California_ used for example purposes only. I actually like the song. ETA: Another problem is that Pandora (and Spotify) don’t have rights to a lot of music that I’d like to listen to. If I’m trying to set up a station featuring, say late '80s Mexican pop music, I’m out of luck. The only way to listen to that stuff these days is either pirated or on physical media like old cassettes and vinyl. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/42 "2024-07-24T13:27:25Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > I used to use Pandora a lot for writing music I think I misinterpreted this at first. (How does Pandora help you to write music??) ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/43 "2024-07-24T13:58:25Z")
Yeah, I tried Pandora a few years ago, and it didn’t work for me either-- because, for me, I like artists who, IMO at least, transcend the genre they are supposedly a part of. For example, I chose ‘Neko Case’ and it started serving me up generic Country music. I don’t like _Country_ (generally), I like _Neko Case_. And I chose ‘The Black Keys’ and was served up a lot of Blues music. I do like Blues, but I wasn’t getting anything I wasn’t already well familiar with. I guess I was hoping for an algorithm that would go “you like creative Indie artists who take a genre and experiment with it in new and interesting ways? Here are some artists you might also like that you may not have heard of”. Instead I got “you like Country? Here’s a bunch of Country. You like Blues? Here’s a bunch of Blues”. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/44 "2024-07-24T14:04:59Z")
> [@Si\_Amigo](#): > > I haven’t used Pandora in many years, but I do know that they are owned by Sirrius XM and that doesn’t give me a good feeling about the algorithm. They run SXM out of Pandora in Europe because they do not have satellite coverage over there. I find SXM to just be OK, but very limited and repetitive. Thread from last year: > [@Sirius XM - worth it?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sirius-xm-worth-it/985056): > > When I bought my truck last year it came with 6 months free. I listened to it pretty much every time I drove till it ran out. Then I just went back to normal radio. I miss it a bit but I can live without it. They are trying to entice me back with $4.99 a month for 24 months plus fees and taxes which comes to under $7 a month. They’ve given me a free week and, again, I do have it on when I’m driving. I just don’t know if it’s worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/45 "2024-07-24T15:06:04Z")
Yes, it definitely does drop what it perceives as my “favorite” bands into stations where they don’t fit at all. In fact, I’ve noticed that happens a lot specifically with Pink Floyd. Would not recommend the no-thumbs technique. I tried doing that once with a Grateful Dead station. It played NOTHING but Dead, Beatles, and Floyd for days, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and terminated the experiment. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/46 "2024-07-24T15:14:39Z")
I just made an exciting discovery! Apparently the algorithm has some temporal element to it; songs released around the same time are considered to some degree “similar”. I am a huge Bob Dylan fan, and one of my biggest Pandora gripes is that it only wants to play his most popular stuff, whereas I would like to have a mix of the classic hits and his work from the last half-century. But I just made a station of early 21st century acts (Green Day, Outkast, White Stripes, etc…nothing you’d consider especially Dylanesque) and early 21st century Dylan songs popped up in the mix! Now, if I want, I could thumb up a bunch of those, then delete the other acts, make “Bob Dylan” the station seed artist, and get my mix of old and new Dylan. Which brings up a crucial point about developing stations to your personal taste; once a song is thumbed up, it continues to influence what gets played on that station, even if the seed artists are changed to a completely different genre. Another point is that this would be SO much easier if you could just put a song directly on a station’s thumbs-up list without having to wait for it to come up in the mix. That’s my #1 Pandora gripe. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/47 "2024-07-24T15:16:15Z")
That was one of my main problems with pandora - I would try to branch out in totally different directions, but it would end up playing music that I liked on other channels that had nothing to do with the new channel I was trying to create. I was trying to use it as a tool to discover new music, so just feeding me stuff I already liked, no matter how unrelated, really missed the point. ---
**Author:** ![Labdad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@Labdad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labdad)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/48 "2024-07-24T15:20:15Z")
One thing I’ve noticed is makes no difference what station you create, it’s going to include Tom Petty! ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/49 "2024-07-24T15:21:40Z")
It does have a “discovery” setting, which is supposed to play more obscure bands that resemble the bands you like. That helps; before I turned that on, I couldn’t get it to play any punk rock that I didn’t already know, and I discovered some new bands that way. But after I while I realized it was just playing _those_ bands over and over, and never wandered further afield. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2024, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/50 "2024-07-24T16:15:22Z")
> [@solost](#): > > Instead I got “you like Country? Here’s a bunch of Country. You like Blues? Here’s a bunch of Blues”. I had a similar experience. I chose Cake, and it started giving me a bunch of generic '90s Alternative Rock. I essentially treat Pandora like FM radio – I listen to it when I just want some random music in the background but don’t really care what, specifically, apart from the basic genre. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2024, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/51 "2024-07-25T13:00:30Z")
Haha, sorry, I wasn’t clear. 🙂 I meant “writing music” in the sense of “music I play in the background while I am writing.” ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2024, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/52 "2024-08-01T15:07:04Z")
I’ve begun a purge of my Pandora stations, hoping that it will help with the problem of hearing the same songs over and over. I’m going through the list of previously-thumbed up songs in each station, and I’m trying to delete as many duplicates as possible (e.g., I’m deleting songs that show up in more than one station). We’ll see if it makes any difference once my task is done. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2024, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/53 "2024-08-02T05:04:34Z")
Please follow up with results of your experiment! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2024, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/54 "2024-08-02T05:24:16Z")
My “They Might Be Giants” channel turned into crude stand-up routines…which turned into Gospel music. I think I’ll switch to Spotify. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2024, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/55 "2024-08-02T16:49:50Z")
I just completed my purge. Holy crap, were there a lot of duplicates to eliminate! Now to find out if I get more variety when I use shuffle. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/56 "2024-08-08T01:43:25Z")
Well, I shut down all my Pandora lists and started a new one yesterday-Electric Light Orchestra, Jeff Lynne And Sweet. So far it started with four ELOs, 2 Jeff Lynnes, two Sweets…then forty nine songs in a row that were all over the spectrum, every damn one of them voted down. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/57 "2024-08-08T14:20:43Z")
I’m not noticing much difference after purging the duplicate thumbs up from my stations. Furthermore, I’ve tried opening a few suggested stations (60s/70s/80s, 90s/00s/today, and road trip singalongs or something like that). Even in these brand new stations, I was hearing nothing but songs that I’ve already thumbed up in my other stations. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/58 "2024-08-08T17:55:31Z")
They could have giants… giant losers. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2024, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/59 "2024-08-08T19:00:31Z")
It’s been a couple of years since I used Pandora, was I was always disappointed in how shallow their “deep cuts” selections were, and “new” artist discovery boiled down to “Maybe you would also like The Eagles?” Their thumbs algorithm was little better than a simple genre tag, and I suspect any claims of somehow algorithmically deep scanning the music file itself were hokum. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2024, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654/60 "2024-08-14T03:17:40Z")
I solved The Pandora Problem! I dumped it and loaded up Spotify. I’m sorry, but that many days in a row of dumping Queen and The Beatles but still getting them every fifth song is just too much for me to put up with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-the-hell-does-pandora-work/1004654.md?page=4)