Pandora Radio, how do you win?

Casually Hardcore

Okay, Pandora Radio. Awesome, right?

Wrong! For me at least, it starts out awesome then all of a sudden it just starts playing the same damn songs that sounds nothing like I wanted it to play to begin with.

For example, I have this Protomen radio station that plays nothing but slipknot and drowning pool and other stuff that sounds nothing like Protomen.

So, how do I win Pandora Radio?

Improvolone

By using Last.fm

TychoCelchuuu

Don't thumbs up every song you like at all, just thumbs up stuff that has things you want to hear more of or that are perfect in basically every way.

Raneados

pandora will occasionally throw up a certain "sound" of music for a while

but you can always tell it you're tired of that song, skip songs, or add variety

after a while it'll play something else

Casually Hardcore

But it just confuses me. My 'DragonForce' station is awesome, and I never thumbsup anything on that station. Of course, the songs are like 7 minutes long, so maybe it never gotten a chance to corrupt itself and start playing shit.

But when I really try to tailor a station to my liking, it slowly and slowly become more and more corporate radio. It's freaking annoying.

MKR

Grooveshark radio, stumbleaudio, last.fm.

Pandora is fine as long as you're feeding it seed music all the time.

Raneados

yeah you need to feed it some more seed music to arrange it to where you want it to go

having one radio station in pandora just doesn't work, as you like different things at different times and can be very picky with taste

Jasconius

Yes, if you have a variety of musical tastes, trying to cram it all in one station will result in you getting a lot of stuff in the gradient between Points A B and C of what you like..

And it's stuff you might not like.

DiscoZombie

I also suck at getting Pandora to be decent. First I was thumbs upping everything I like on one station, and occasionally seeding stuff I like directly to the station. The variety was crap. It would essentially play the same 20 songs every day and rarely give me anything new. So I tried splitting my one station up into several and doing a quick mix of them. This gave me more variety for a short while, but now it just plays a *different* set of the same 20 songs every day.

Grooveshark is my definite first choice for internet radio, but the last patch for the Android Grooveshark app broke it for me and I'm stuck using Pandora again

I should try last.fm, but what's so different or special about that? I tried it once and the website was too convoluted so I sort of shied away from it.

Crashtard

Last.fm seems to play more music that's like the song/artist you put in, where I felt like pandora was much more about discovering new/not so similar music.

naporeon

As a grizzled veteran of Pandora, I have some wisdom to impart. If you're struggling, try this:

1. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Music_Genome_Project_attributes
2. Pick two or three attributes you'd like your station to have. (If you're looking for something specific, ask Pandora why it's playing a certain song. It will give you six or seven attributes in response.)
3. Use Google to find songs that share those attributes. (See below.)
4. Pick 3-5 songs from the Google search, and seed your station with them. Never add more seeds, only thumb-up or thumb-down.

GOOGLE SEARCHES

site:pandora.com inurl:song "[ATTRIBUTE ONE]" "[ATTRIBUTE TWO]" "[ATTRIBUTE THREE]"

OR

site:pandora.com inurl:song "prominent accordion part" "mixed minor & major key tonality" "folk influences"

naporeon

I would also recommend making your stations as specific as possible. I have around 30 stations, most of which are very specific. For example, I have a banjo station and a baroque harpsichord station that are remarkably good at playing only songs conforming to their respective station concepts, despite only having a couple seeds. Likewise, my Django Reinhardt station does a fantastic job of sticking to jazz guitar in the distinct style of his era.

TIPS

• Seed 2 or 3 tracks per station, preferably by different artists. Use thumbs-up and thumbs-down to do the heavy lifting.
• Unless you're trying to make an orchestra or opera/musical station (for which Pandora lacks a lot of tools), ONLY seed songs, not artists. Once you are experienced at getting stations to play what you want, then you can start experimenting with artist seeds.
• Only thumb-up songs you genuinely like. Discipline is key.
• If a station starts to lose cohesion, empty out some of the thumbed-up -- or even thumbed-down -- songs.

Also, my profile page can be found HERE, if anyone would like to be Pandora buddies.

peterdevore

I want to thank those in this thread who have suggested grooveshark. I've been miffed at pandora not being available over here and last.fm going for pay. Grooveshark has a snappy interface, great quality and found everything I've searched for so far. It's probably in that 'burning money until it gets popular' phase though.

MKR

peterdevore wrote: »

I want to thank those in this thread who have suggested grooveshark. I've been miffed at pandora not being available over here and last.fm going for pay. Grooveshark has a snappy interface, great quality and found everything I've searched for so far. It's probably in that 'burning money until it gets popular' phase though.

The best part is you can find obscure stuff. I've found a lot of songs that spawned from the music community in Athens (GA), as well as most anime theme songs I've searched for.

2868

Highly freaking informative. My Black Keys, and Radiohead stations always gets ruined about 10 songs in.

I had no idea about grooveshark or Last.fm and after gaining knowledge vis a vis this thread, I was inadvertently cockblocked.

The first thing I did was search for my girlfriend on grooveshark. She's on it, but not the album she just released (that I did the artwork for). The shit on there is unreleased stuff that maybe went out as a demo like 10 years ago. Weird.

She's on last.fm, but not Pandora. I tell her this, and now she's in the midst uncovering tools for promotion and can't be swayed from her seat in front of the computer. Oh internet radio, what can't you do?