Feature request: shuffle stations

[mutzmatron]

Given that pandora's quickmix is seems to be the only (and somewhat cumbersome) way of shuffling stations, it seems it would be straightforward to build arbitrarily feature-rich shuffling in on the client side.

[PromyLOPh]

What's so bad about quickmix, why do we need two shuffling features and what exactly would be "feature-rich shuffling"?

[mutzmatron]

So the reason I posted this was wanting the ability to have multiple shuffle stations.
As for what more advanced shuffle features could mean, maybe something like weighted shuffling (more time spend on certain artists) or there could be a setting for how often to shuffle stations, eg after every track or after every 5.

[ZigZagJoe]

Every song would lead to a pandora ban. I do every 4 songs (the size of a pandora playlist fragment) with mine. Could get multiple playlists then shuffle the songs they contain, though.

Weighted shuffling is basically impossible; pandora clients take what pandora sends, there is no control over what is sent besides the station choice.

The problem with quickmix is that it's more a "mash-up" than a shuffle - if you have a bunch of diametrically opposed stations (ie. rap vs rock, classical vs metal, country vs ... you get the idea), quickmix performs very poorly, and as it's still just a "normal" station, the max variety is limited to about 500 songs (about 300 common ones). So you end up with a poor choice of songs, and not a very good overall listening experience. That's the reason I did not implement quickmix on my client until very recently.

Quickmix is good to mash-up 3 or so semi-related stations, not all (or most) of an account's stations.

Easy way to do shuffling would be where songs are dequeued, if the song queue is empty, randomize station.

[PromyLOPh]

Where do you get the information about quickmix's limitations from, ZigZagJoe?

Easy way to do shuffling would be where songs are dequeued, if the song queue is empty, randomize station.

That sounds practical. But better call it "shuffle light" ;)

[ZigZagJoe]

Observing quickmix behavior over time, let's call it. Ahem... having it play much music, with no input, leads same rough number of songs played as a normal station. Pandora needs negative feedback otherwise it gets locked into patterns (same songs played over and over). Max variety is somewhere around 500 songs, averages about 300, per station. But if you only love songs, it gets trapped.

As far as I can tell, it [quickmix] just uses the selected stations' "dna" (seeds/loved/banned?), all piled into one. It helps if the stations are of compatible types, but does not do very well with dissimilar ones.

[PromyLOPh]

Well, guess I have to do some research on my own as I'm not using quickmix much. Added to my todo list.

[alphapapa]

I can only offer my anecdotal feelings, but I think ZigZagJoe is quite right. I spend most of my Pandora listening time on QuickMix. I have a wide variety of genres in my stations. Only considering the last two days, I hear many repeats. Then if I switch to a specific station, I'll hear songs that I haven't ever heard before. The station was in QuickMix, so why do I only hear those songs when not using QuickMix?

It seems like it's definitely a Pandora issue. I once emailed them asking for more than one QuickMix station, so I wouldn't have to keep selecting and deselecting stations, and they said it was on their to-do list. Maybe we should bring this issue to their attention.

I wouldn't object to working around the issue with a third-party client, though. :) I think it would be safe to switch stations after 3-4 songs, maybe even after 2. Pandora doesn't start giving the playlist-empty temporary bans until you've received a LOT of playlists.

[PromyLOPh]

Quick and dirty eventcmd hack: https://gist.github.com/1536126

[gtmanfred]

with your script, I think you need to subtract 1 from the station count on line 20

[PromyLOPh]

You are right. I corrected the gist.