Pandora: Music & Podcasts

Many new features!

What's New in Version 4.0

A new Pandora for the iPhone and iPod Touch with the following added features:

• Share your latest discoveries with friends on Pandora, Facebook, and Twitter
• Discover new music by following others on the Music Feed
• Re-discover your favorite music on your profile page
• Explore the artists and music you love directly on your device
 • Full lyrics for the songs we play
 • Artist biographies and discographies
 • Detailed track features from the Music Genome Project
• Find even more music you'll love by adding variety to your stations
• Enjoy constantly updated and expertly curated genre stations

... and other great updates:

• Timer added to the track progress indicator - drag the player controls up to reveal the timer
• Support for the taller iPhone 5 screen
• Support for new BMW vehicles with the “BMW Apps” option, see bmwusa.com/apps for more details
• Numerous stability and performance enhancements

• Stuck with a flaky connection? We've improved playback buffering to keep your favorite music stutter-free.
• Never miss another great song: if you mute your phone, we'll pause your music for you.
• More links to more of what you love: all the URLs that work on Pandora.com now work just as well on your phone.
• Bug fixes and improvements to keep your music playing as it should.

Unfortunetly, There are problems with this latest version. Please be advise there are VoiceOver problems.

What's New in Version 5.3
Start waking up to music you love – the Pandora alarm clock is now available for iPad
• Pick your your favorite station to play as your alarm
• Not ready to wake up? Adjust the snooze time to catch more zzz’s
• Use with the sleep timer to hear your music morning and night


 

In previous versions of Pandora, I was able to search for a song to create a station around. In those version, I was able to search not only for a particular song but also for a particular artist's version of that song by typing both the song and the artist into the search field. However, I am now only able to type in the song. If I type in the artist, it says no results found. However, if I just type the song, I just get a bunch of song titles without the artist being listed for each one of them.

Say I want to search for "Amazing Grace" but the version by LeAnn Rimes. If I search for "Amazing Grace LeAnn Rimes", I get no results, but if I just search for "Amazing Grace", I get tones of results saying "Amazing Grace" but with no artist listed after them. I therefore cannot tell which one is the ne by LeAnn Rimes or if the one by LeAnn Rimes is even in the system!

Is there any workaround to this? Is the fact that artists are not listed after my results a general issue with Pandora or is it that VoiceOver is simply not reading the arists name but that it is, in fact, listed after the track?

In any case, how do I get around this?

You need to add the word by between the song title and the artist name when searching for both at the same time. In your example, you would search for Amazing Grace by LeAnn Rimes.

In the search results, the title and artist are both displayed visually, but VoiceOver only reads the song title. It's actually worse when using the Add Variety feature to have more than one seed on a station. The results there are not read by VoiceOver at all, so you have to trust that the top hit is the one you want.

This is one of many accessibility problems introduced in the latest version of Pandora. I have contacted them about this and given them a lot of details about how the VoiceOver experience has regressed in this version. My communication with them went well, and I was assured that the engineers are working to resolve the issue. I am anxiously waiting for the next version, hoping they manage to fix at least some of these issues in that version. Until then, we just have to cope with what we've got.

The good news is that most issues I had with the previous version of Pandora have been addressed.

The bad news is that, when navigating through the list of stations, you will not hear the station name unless you have VoiceOver himts turned on, and then you have to wait until the end of the hint to hear the station name. For example, if a station is called Nickelback Radio, you hear VoiceOver say, "Station name. Double-tapping it starts Nickelback Radio station."

Near as I can tell, this is the only place in the app whre you need VoiceOver hints to get the necessary info. When navigating through the list of recommended stations, search results, add variety results, and so on, VoiceOver gives you the station name in the main label, not just in the hint.

It's too bad switching stations is a core, must-have function of the app, and it's a shame that this one part of the app has been made less convenient. At least the app is pretty much fully accessible now.

Problems that have been fixed include:

1. The website info, such as song lyrics, artist bio, similar artists, and the like, is now fully accessible.
2. It appears all functional buttons now have labels. There were a few unlabeled buttons in prior versions, but the ones I know of are all nicely labeled now.
3. The Shuffle options button is now accessible. However, like the options for all stations, it may not be visible to VoiceOver at first, though the issue can be worked around by switching between landscape and portrait modes while the station is playing.
4. As I said above, the list of recommended stations, search results, add variety results, etc. are now fully accessible and labeled.
5. On the iPad, there is no longer an unlabeled button overlaid on top of the song, artist, and album names, so this info can now be accessed with touch navigation. Before, I had to use finger swipes to get to the info for the current track, or else bring up the Control Center and get it from there.

Issues that persist include:

1. As I said above, the button for station option, displayed next to the currently playing station, is not always seen by VoiceOver. It is there when the app first loads, but it seems to disappear when you change to another station. Switching between landscape and portrait modes resolves the issue, until you change stations again.
2. The album art section of the screen, at least on the iPad, remains inaccessible. This area, from what I've been told, is supposed to let you give thumbs up or thumbs down to a song that has already finished playing. Not a big deal, but it could come in handy if you weren't quick enough on the draw.
3. There are still a couple of cosmetic features that VoiceOver is reading while navigating, but this does not affect the app's usability.

All in all, with only a couple of minor problems, Pandora is now nearly 100% accessible. Pandora clearly put some effort into improving the app, and I applaud them for it. Now, they just need to fix the issue they introduced in the stations list, and I think everyone will be happy.

EDIT: I found an issue I missed earlier. When configuring the Shuffle station, VoiceOver does not give any feedback as to which stations will be included in the shuffle. There is a visual icon next to each station that is part of the shuffle, and double-tapping on a station toggles thee icon on and off, but VoiceOver says nothing. I included this finding in the email I sent Pandora regarding this update.

I've been having trouble hitting the thumbs up and down buttons. I can easily find them, but voiceover says nothing when I double tap on them. Because of this, I'm not sure my feedback has been registered. Does anybody else have this issue?

Yeah according to some of the posts on this thread it's broken wiht voice over. Maybe contact them and see what you get.

Good luck.

On my iPad, the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons work perfectly, as they always have. That part of the app has not been affected in any of the recent updates, despite other areas having accessibility quirks. You might want to close the app from the app switcher and relaunch it, in case something weird happened.

I have closed it out of the app switcher and rebooted my phone, and there is no change. My next step will be to contact the developer and make sure they are aware of the problem, and hopefully they will get it fixed.

Since it is often difficult to find direct contact information for companies on their web sites, I was wondering if could post a direct link where we might contact Pandora about accessibility? If so, could they please post that link here?

Hi Misty,

To contact Pandora, please visit http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/emails/new.

First of all, I contacted Pandora about the whole annoying "Station name." issue but have yet either to hear a thing back from them or to notice any changes in the right direction.

So, in order to help us navigate the app more productively, I tried looking for an option to arrange stations alphabetically. I thought I recalled that this setting existed in this app, but, when I tried looking for it, both in the app's native Settings tab and under the Settings on the iPhone, I was unable to locate such an option.

Does this option still exist? Or, rather, has it become inaccessible? If it does exist, where can I find it?

I have canceled my pandora one subscription. A friend told me that the 40-hour listening limit has been removed. Is this the case?

Notes state:
Improvements and bug fixes to give you the best listening experience.

Station names withVO seem to behave correctly now by reading the station name without having hints on.

Version 5.5 fixed a couple of issues, most notably the problem with station names already mentioned above.

However, they managed to break something in the process, again. The text field for creating stations no longer works properly. VoiceOver does not recognize the element as a text field, but you can still double-tap it to start editing. As you type, either with the on-screen keyboard or with a Bluetooth one, you will hear a bonk sound after each keypress instead of any typing echo. Also, there's no way to review what you typed, except by navigating through the search results. There is also no way to access the cancel button next to the text field, so if you want to cancel the operation, you have to close the app from the app switcher, or else create a station and then delete it. Finally, if you're using a Bluetooth keyboard, you need to turn Quick Nav off manually.

I also think they should remove the words "station name" which VoiceOver still says prior to announcing each station name. That would make it easier to scan through the list of stations to find the one you want.

I will send more feedback to Pandora about this. They are clearly trying, and I don't fault them for that, but it is a bit discouraging that every time they fix something, they manage to break something else.

To the editorial team here, I recommend changing the usability rating of the app to minor issues. As far as I know, the behavior of the text field is the only significant issue, and that is more of an oddity in VoiceOver behavior than anything else, which does not prevent the usability of the app in any real significant way. The usability of the app is definitely better than it was back when version 5.3 came out, which broke a number of things that have since been addressed.

I have confirmed this behavior with two other people. Often when switching from one station to the next now the new station doesn't load until you've done it a couple times. Also the screen doesn't seem to be updating properly with VO. The options button seems to appear before the station you are listening to in the list instead of after. Once it brought up the options for a station I wasn't even listening too at the time when I wanted to add variety. Text fields don't always open on the first double tap. If I flick back and forth and double tap again it usually works. Occasionally when switching stations while playing another station with voiceover, the wrong station gets selected and starts to play. I agree that it would be nice if it didn't say station name before every station. This happens even when you are adding variety or creating a station and scrolling through the list of available artists or songs for building your station. Obviously I need to write them and give feedback.

Pandora is trying, and improvements have been made. Unfortunately often with this app it comes down to one step forward, two steps back. Here is the direct link to their E-mail form to provide feedback.

http://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/emails/completed

I just wrote them with feedback and refered them again to this site so we'll see what happens.

Take care and be blessed.

I got an email from them regarding ht eios team. I already told htem what was up but they responded as if they did not read the message. here is what they said.

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for writing in about this. We are aware that our recent release has caused issues for our blind and print disabled listeners, and we do apologize for the surprise and inconvenience that undoubtedly caused to your listening experience.

I'd be happy to gather more information so I can share this with our Engineers.

What features were you able to access in the past, that are no longer working?

What hurdles do you encounter while listening, and what features could help with this?

We really appreciate your help with this.

Best, Star | Pandora

When I first wrote into Pandora after version 5.3, the first email response I got was similar to the one you just posted. I responded with a very detailed account of exactly what I experienced in the new version. Much of what I said in the followup email was repeated from the first, but I made sure to explain everything in such a way that a sighted person could understand clearly how my experience was. I then got another reply from Pandora, thanking me for what I provided and assuring that the developers would work on improving the app.

With the release of 5.4, and now with 5.5, I sent in additional feedback by replying to the messages I last received from Pandora. Each time, I got a reply thanking me for the continued feedback and again assuring me that the appropriate people would get the information.

I know some people don't like that kind of response, but as far as I'm concerned, so long as they follow through on their end in subsequent releases, I am satisfied. So far, pretty much every issue I've brought up has been addressed, except for a couple of minor quirks that don't really affect the usability of the app. So, from my perspective, they have delivered.

I encourage you, and anyone else who is asked similar questions by Pandora when contacting them, to reply to the email you received, going into further detail about your experience. The more people write in about their experiences, the greater the likelihood the issues will be addressed.

Since I dont 'use the app would you guys mind if I took yoru feedback from this thread witht he detailed explainations? if not then feel free to contact me using my contact form explainign what's broken in 5.4 and I'll be happy to pass it along.

Take cre.