Is Pandora acting stupid? - EVO 4G Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

This problem just started today but it's annoying. I'm playing the Usher, Trey Songz, Keith Sweat stations and it plays rock music every other song. Rock has nothing to do with the genre R&B. I have nothing against rock but today is a smooth day for me and Pandora is ruining the mood.

It's trying to tell you to listen to better music

Yeah well Coldplay shouldn't be playing in the Usher station. I listen to Rock but I'm not feeling it today. It's just annoying that every other song is a rock song.

listen to some real music
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Ahh everyone already beat me to it.
I find Pandora's algorithms dubious at best. I use it mostly for electronic music and it does a horrible job. Gives me trance or even happy hardcore when the station is a minimal techno DJ, other stuff like that. Since they claim that the algorithms actually compare the quantifiable metrics that define a music style, I find it surprising that it does such a poor job at comparing music that is typically so easy to compartmentalize into subgenres.

Also a random thought but I would love to be able to use SubSonic (which streams your own music collection from your desktop) along with a Pandora-like algorithm shuffle to play my own music, shuffled, of a certain style. Sounds dumb but I literally have more music than I could listen to in my lifetime (ok, maybe not literally) and I would love to be able to "discover" some of that music without the crappy Pandora bitrate or the ads.

Why don't you folks try using the thumb up / thumb down buttons to tune the station song choices?
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

what can we do its free right
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Every few weeks, Pandora seems to inject the database with a huge stack of new music. (New as in, they didn't have it before, not new as in recently recorded.)
Rock may not be R&B, but maybe the backing sound of the track is why someone added tags that caused the engine to play that particular song.
I've been a Pandora user for years and my channel list has been maxed at 100 for as long as I can remember. I use the thumbs up/down buttons a lot and I've got the system trained pretty well for my use. But every so often some track will sneak in where I ask "..the hell did that one come from?"

I always hit thumbs down but the same song plays the next day. I took me over 20 skips yesterday to actually hear a song from Usher. I was wanting to listen to "DJ got us falling in love" and it never played. I ended up DL'ing it through Music Junk.

Pandora isn't a playlist application in that it usually can't be targeted to play a specific track. Because if you ask for a certain track, it will just consider it a seed and build a new station around it.
Setting a track to thumbs down should make it so you never hear it again. Odd that you would. Unless the free version is acting strangely.
Along with thumbs down, you can also choose the "don't play this track again for a month" in the song menu. Then you definitely won't hear it again, at least for a few weeks.
Sounds like you'd be better off with Slacker or Finetune so you can build a specific playlist.

Related

[Q] Is it Defy or all android that suck at playing media?

I've been trying for days to get the defy to work i want.
I listen to audiobooks, music and podcasts, and I need to be able to control it from the headset
I tried default player, google listen, winamp, doggcatcher. And cant get the thing to work right!!
Music+ doesn't even register the button press, listen resumes and skips to next track, even if you're playing another audio in the background. Winamp on its own is fine but does not download podcasts, and doggcatcher has conflicts with winamp on the headset thing.
Has anyone find a good solution for this? it seems just the way android is built, and the lack of a good unified media player (with or integrated with podcast manager).
Such a disappointment... I was so looking for having an android phone! If I can't find a solution, it seems its not for someone like me untill they integrate things a little more tightly.
Well, it's not the Defy. And while I don't think that Android sucks at playing media I do agree with some of your points. I also listen to audio books and podcast. For the moment I'm using AudioBook Player 2 for audiobooks. It's not prefect by a long shot but it does the job. As for podcast I haven't found anything useful yet. The defaut player is suppose to play podcast but there is no way to skip through. If I have to stop listening to the podcast there is no way of getting back to were I left off. And while the device obviously play videos, and does so quite well, I haven't found any type of video player interface. The only way I can start a video is by going into the gallery and taping on the file I want to play. That dosen't seem right to me.
So yeah, I feel your frustration.
JamesDax said:
Well, it's not the Defy. And while I don't think that Android sucks at playing media I do agree with some of your points.
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Yes, sorry. I did not meant to bash, its just that I soo wanted to love it... and I don't, and if there is no good solution I think android is not for my for now. I don't know. It has so many great things!
Thanks for your suggestions I'll look into it.
On another subject : When I listen to music, I can't do anything else (switching to landscape mode e.g.), otherwise it's really slow.
Is anybody else having that bug ? Some guy here mentioned it. But he then said he fixed it without having it deodexed. How do you fix this ?
Meridian is a media player that does most of what you want, with the possible exceptin of podcasting (don´t use it, don´t know).
It remembers where you last listened to a track, and if you switch to video (which has a library of it´s own) it still remembers where in the audio track you were when you go back to that. So actually better than WMP there... ;-)
Only thing that grinds my gears with this is an annoying bug that starts a random track when I press the button on any wired headset. If I hang up a call, or if I want to pause and then start playing in Spotify or radio, Meridian starts playing a tune in the background. I thought it was a bug I was having with my Pulse, but it´s there with the Defy as well.
A BT headset has none of these issues though.
Don't worry google is working on a multimedia improvement......soooonnnn soon, also has anyone tried poweramp

Music and the best way to handle it.

Greetings. Im hoping someone might be able to help me with a very annoying problem im having.
I have somewhere around 2000 music tracks, all of which are uploaded to Google Music. Ive had GMusic since they first announced the beta and i love the fact that my entire library is everywhere I go. I also love that i can download the tracks directly on my phone, from my phone.
However using the app to play music is horrible. In the past i used poweramp, which is a wonderful player. My main problem with Google Music is it audibly cuts the power from the headphone jack in between tracks, so when i have it hooked up to my car stereo i hear a pop when the track changes... which annoys me to utter hell. On top of that it behaves weirdly some times, for example i had it set to shuffle all the other day, and it would stop on every song, and i would have to hit play manually to go to the next song.
What i would like to do is go back to using PowerAmp, but be able to manage my music as easily as i do with GMusic. Problem is that, PowerAmp doesnt see the music i download from the GMusic app and the one time it did, all the meta-data wasnt there. So all poweramp said was "Unknown track 1".
The other side of the problem is managing it on my computer. Since i bought music from Itunes and Google Music, keeping everything organized has become a nightmare(i have a number of compilations, and when you download the music from google music, it organizes it by artist not by the album). Which is why i dont want to have to manually move files to my phone. Ive tried WinAmp and Double Twist, and both have their annoyances. I was wondering what other people do, maybe someone can make my life easier.
subsonic, streams from your PC, no need to upload it to the cloud and it the UI is not bad either. it can also cache your streams for offline play

[Q] Music player resets track

I listen to long audio files on my music player going to and from work. I am new to the Dinc2 and have noticed that if I am part way through a track when I get to work, the music player resets to the beginning of the track when I go to listen again at the end of the day. These are long files - sometimes a track is 30 - 50 minutes long - so it is a pain to find my place again. Does anyone know how to prevent this?
stuckinthedirt said:
I listen to long audio files on my music player going to and from work. I am new to the Dinc2 and have noticed that if I am part way through a track when I get to work, the music player resets to the beginning of the track when I go to listen again at the end of the day. These are long files - sometimes a track is 30 - 50 minutes long - so it is a pain to find my place again. Does anyone know how to prevent this?
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Maybe try a different player,I don't know of it has out or noir bit Apollo of the play store is a good one,try it...
Sent from my ADR6350 using xda app-developers app
Is it the stock player? I think the Google and Android player limits amount of time it can be active. Like said above Apollo is cool. Also GoneMad is fairly lightweight n has tons of options, but only a 14 day trail period. Tons of other players out there.
Yes, it is the stock player. I will try Apollo, and some others, and see how it goes. Thanks
Music Folder Player
So I tried a bunch, and finally landed on Music Folder Player. It keeps track of my place in the track, even through a full reboot, and has scads of options. So far the free version seems fine.

[Q] Audio Sputtering and Popping on Spotify, TuneIn

Hello all,
I love the audio quality on CM, however ever since using it on my Verizon Galaxy Nexus, the audio on Spotify has constantly popped and stuttered and sputtered and whatever other word you want to use when playing through the headphone jack.
I feel like I've tried everything outside of switching ROMs. Tiny Kernel, Franco Kernel, CPU Governors, etc etc etc, doesn't matter.
I've also done search after search after search, and I feel like I'm completely alone in having this issue. I can't find anyone asking about this anymore, now that Spotify claims to have fixed it in an app release months ago (which makes me think it isn't necessarily Spotify's fault, but who knows).
I should mention that this does not happen with Pandora or Songza, for instance. Only Spotify and TuneIn.
Of course, it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that both Pandora and Songza process the audio in some different way from Spotify and TuneIn, since normal use of CM's DSP Manager has no effect on those apps but does work on Spotify.
So, is there anyone else out there who has this issue with CM (or other ROMs)?? At this point I'm just hoping there are others out there who have had this problem just so it isn't an "only my phone" issue -- because those ones have no hope of being fixed.
I have the same problem, running stock 4.2.2 on my Galaxy Nexus. I think it's a device problem, not an app/background process problem.
I don't use TuneIn so I can't speak to the quality of its streams, but I have used Rdio, Slacker, Pandora and Google Play Music and they all play flawlessly.
ONLY Spotify plays audios with occasional snaps, crackles and pops, like a bowl of Rice Krispies. Some songs will play without a blip, some with a few, some with many. The songs are not interrupted...just marred by this defect. And it's never the same way twice with the same song.
It happens whether the song is streaming, or playing locally.
My guess is that the Nexus has difficulty playing Ogg Vorbis files, which is the format for Spotify streams and downloads. As far as I know, the other services I mentioned stream in AAC or MP3. While the Nexus supports Ogg Vorbis, it appears it does not support it very well. I'm going to test this theory by transcoding one of my Apple Lossless audio files to Ogg and then uploading it to the Nexus. My hunch is that it will demonstrate the same issues.
I guess we should consider ourselves lucky; before Jelly Bean the Nexus suffered from more dramatic playback problems. Do a Google search on "Music Stutters when playing long files and screen off: Galaxy Nexus" and read through it. There are a couple of posts that deal specifically with Ogg playback.
I've decided to live with it. I've been hopping from music service to music service trying to find the right one, and I always come back to Spotify. As long as the issue doesn't become more severe, I think I can re-program my brain to tolerate it.
Skyh said:
Hello all,
I love the audio quality on CM, however ever since using it on my Verizon Galaxy Nexus, the audio on Spotify has constantly popped and stuttered and sputtered and whatever other word you want to use when playing through the headphone jack.
I feel like I've tried everything outside of switching ROMs. Tiny Kernel, Franco Kernel, CPU Governors, etc etc etc, doesn't matter.
I've also done search after search after search, and I feel like I'm completely alone in having this issue. I can't find anyone asking about this anymore, now that Spotify claims to have fixed it in an app release months ago (which makes me think it isn't necessarily Spotify's fault, but who knows).
I should mention that this does not happen with Pandora or Songza, for instance. Only Spotify and TuneIn.
Of course, it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that both Pandora and Songza process the audio in some different way from Spotify and TuneIn, since normal use of CM's DSP Manager has no effect on those apps but does work on Spotify.
So, is there anyone else out there who has this issue with CM (or other ROMs)?? At this point I'm just hoping there are others out there who have had this problem just so it isn't an "only my phone" issue -- because those ones have no hope of being fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
---------- Post added at 11:20 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:02 AM ----------
My theory was incorrect. I used XLD to transcode Boston's "Hitch A Ride" from Apple Lossless to Ogg Vorbis (VBR, quality 4.0), then put the file on my phone. I used Winamp to play the file and it played beautifully.
So I'm thinking there's something specific with Spotify's encoding that the Nexus doesn't like.
What's odd is that I have run Spotify on other mobile devices and have never had an issue. That's why I have trouble putting the blame on them.
OP, after checking many Google leads, posts, etc. I believe--for Spotify anyway--I have found a way to stop (or at least greatly reduce) the Rice Krispies.
If you have Google Play Music on your phone, make sure it's fully updated and then launch it.
Within Play Music, go to Settings, then select Equalizer.
Turn the equalizer on, select the Normal preset, and move the Bass Boost and 3D Effect sliders all the way to the left to turn them off...unless you like them on.
Back out of Google Play Music to the home screen, then launch Spotify.
Go to Settings within Spotify, choose Audio Effects and verify the Equalizer is OFF in that app.
Using this combination of settings/conditions, I have heard just a couple of pops over a string of a half-dozen songs. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it lasts.
I'm guessing that having the Google Play Music equalizer on, some additional processing is taking place that alleviates whatever is causing the popping to occur.
Good luck!

Chromecast Audio Review from a Squeezebox User

As title says, this is going to be a Chromecast Audio review from the point of view of a Squeezebox user. As such, it will mostly be comparing CCA and Squeezebox. I'm also hoping some other CCA users see this and might be able to chime in on some of the shortcomings I'm having with CCA.
Overall, I'm liking CCA better than Squeezebox. CCA sync is dead on, and I have 6 rooms going. My squeezebox setup was a mix of PC and android devices running various squeezebox player software, and the sync would always be off for the first few seconds of a song. Occasionally, audio would get out of sync and starting and stopping playback was necessary. I listen to a lot of podcasts, some of which I pay for, and Squeezebox doesn't support HTTPS for podcasts. CCA is so easy to use for podcasts, it's increased my already high amount of podcast listening by quite a bit. Another benefit of CCA and podcasts, since I'm using the same app I listen to podcasts with on my phone, playback is synced. I used to listen to part of a podcast in the car on the way home from work, then have to scrub through podcast on squeezebox to find the spot I was at. Not the largest inconvenience in the world, but it's nice that I don't have to do it any more.
Now on to the shortcomings of CCA. Two things that worked with Squeezebox that are important features to me were mixing local files with tracks from Spotify and Last.fm Scrobbling. I have a large music library and quite a bit of it isn't available on most streaming services. Google Music let's you upload your local library and stream it, so I'm trying to match the Spotify/Local file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone, the app seems to time out and stop live tracking what is playing, thus the scrobbling app I have also starts to miss playing tracks. This happens even when the phone is plugged in to charge. As a work around, I'll play music from my PC using Google Play music on chrome with a chrome extension to scrobble. This works great, except now the only thing I can control with my phone is play/pause and volume. If I want to add tracks to playlist, change songs, etc, gotta walk over to the PC. With squeezebox, I could control the music with any device, and switch between devices doing the controlling with no issue.
There are programs, like Kodi and Emby, that have the ability to cast music. I'm pretty sure they also have plugins for Last.fm. So they would seem to solve scrobbling and controlling with multiple devices. I'm not 100% clear on whether they can play local files as well as tracks from Spotify or Google Music (or any other streaming service for that matter) on the same playlist. I think my next project is going to be setting up Kodi or Emby and seeing if I can get the functionality I want.
Another minor thing about CCA I'm not liking is that you can't control volumes until after playback is started. If I'm playing music in the evening before heading out with friends, I'll turn the volume up. Then in the morning, if I want to play something to get me moving, I have to hit play and then pause as fast as possible so my eardrums aren't blown out. I'm going to have to start teaching myself to turn down the volume when I stop playing music...
I have my personal music library on a NAS and play it all through BubbleUPnP App on a range of android devices. Best option I have found for anybody in the family being able to control all the music collection from any device.
I'm trying to match the Spotify o download music from insta-downloader.online l file functionality this way. So far, it's working pretty well, but that leads to the scrobbling issues. If I play music from my phone and I heard very nice in my app the music
Yeah this is App https://insta-downloader.online/ on a range of android devices, In my opinion is very nice

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