iTunes radio has a mind of its own

Nothing yere. i've had the opisate experinece. it plays what I tell it to. Odd?

I've had it play the selected artist once, then branch into other artists. It seems that the originating artist for a customer station doesn't play nearly as often as, say, Pandora does.

I've started two stations, and both times, the originating artist hasn't played. Fortunately, I really liked the music ITunes picked for the station. It was just strange that I tried a "Led Zeppelin" station, and Tame Impala played. It wasn't a "match" I would have envisioned, but it worked.

I'm helping a friend as she learns how to use her iPod Touch. She's getting quite unimpressed with iTunes Radio, since every time she creats a station and goes to play it, it tells her that the station is temporarily unavailable. They've been unavailable for 3 days now. Her first one was just an 80's station that she customized, but she also wanted an American Idol station, so she put a lot of work in to it, entering all the Idol artists that she wanted, and now the station is unavailable. She shared it with me and I can't play it. we shared it with another friend of ours, (living in a different city,) and he can't play it either. She's thinking about ditching iTunes and using Pandorah instead.