Pandora Tips and Tricks

 

We’ve already gone over how Pandora builds customized stations in a previous post – so how can you make the most of the Music Genome Project?
 
Check out the tips below to create a station you’ll love:
 
Create stations from songs, not artists:
 
Any particular artist could have a plethora of styles and musical genomes represented. For example, take the two following songs that could easily play back-to-back on a Beatles station:

I Want to Hold Your Hand  &  Come Together

Building a playlist off of “I Want To Hold Your Hand” will trigger The Beach Boys, Louis Armstrong, and The Turtles. “Come Together” will trigger Aerosmith, Cream, and The Rolling Stones.
 
Building a playlist off The Beatles as a whole? You’ll get all of them, and in no particular order.

Conserve your “skips”

Normally, you can skip six songs per hour when listening to Pandora. However, switching to a different station doesn’t count as a skip. You can go back to your original station after three to four minutes (however long the song would have kept playing had you stayed).

Use the thumbs up button sparingly!

Keep in mind that the “thumbs up” button broadens your song selection each time you use it – liking any particular track will add all of its associated genomes to your station. “Thumbs Up”-ing five songs on a single station will make it hard for Pandora to focus. Add a dozen? You might as well hit “random."
 
If you love a song, but it doesn’t really match the profile of your station, just create a new station using the track as a base. Save the thumbs up for songs that you not only love, but also match your station.

Use the thumbs down button sparingly too!
 
Same rationale as above – using this button will remove genomes from your station profile, so using it too much will reduce your station to looping the same few songs over and over.
 
Additionally, “thumbs down”-ing two songs by the same artist will remove that artist entirely from your station. If you’re just not in the mood for a certain track, hover over the album art and select “I’m tired of this song.” It will remove it from the playlist for a month.

Want to listen to all the songs an artist has available on Pandora?

Normally, the artist page is only accessible while a song by that artist is being played. However, there’s a way to search for individual pages though Google.
 
Copy and paste the following into your search bar: site:pandora.com inurl:artist
 
Replace the word “artist” with the name of the artist you’re searching for. For example, let’s say we’re looking for The Beatles. Our search would look like this: site:pandora.com inurl:Beatles

This first result happens to be the one we’re looking for (if there are multiple artists with similar names, you might have to check the URL). This will bring us to Pandora’s artist page, where you can browse their entire discography, as well as listen to 30 second samples of all their songs.

Have any favorite stations or your own Pandora tips? Let us know!