Pandora now only allows one stream in Sonos

  • 12 May 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 604 views

Userlevel 5
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I used to have Pandora playing different stations in different rooms of my house for years., but I started getting the “someone else is listening to you account” recently. I have a family account. I am not trying to stream from different locations or with different interfaces (phone, computer, sonos) with the same user. I am only using Sonos. I emailed Pandora about this and their response was that it was a bug and that they have since fixed it. Only one stream is allowed. Grouped speakers can play the same stream, but you cannot play different streams in different rooms. This is highly disappointing and annoying to me. Do other services allow Sonos to play different streams in different rooms?


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6 replies

I am also interested in this if anyone has any feedback. I have been experiencing the same situation.

Userlevel 5
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I want to clarify that Pandora’s response was that the bug was that they were allowing users to stream more than one station to a set of sonos speakers. The “fix” is that they no longer allow users to stream different stations to different Sonos speakers.

I found this discussion linked below, so it appears that this is indeed true. 

Pandora forum

I’d like to again pose the question of any other music services that allow streaming of different stations to different sonos speakers on the same network?

Userlevel 7
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Been a while but Rhapsody/Napster had no issues.

Amazon has no issues today, only tried 3 streams though.

Userlevel 7
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There was a discussion on the same subject with Spotify on here last week. Spotify seemed not to see the possibility to play two different streams on a Sonos system as a bug, so cured the problem that popped up for some users.

Pandora is certainly way out of line if it won’t allow different streams from a family account. That is almost unbelievable. Spotify and Amazon Music allow multiple streams from an individual account (provided the Sonos app is used to launch the streams, not Alexa or GA).  Have you added all the different Pandora family logins to your Sonos system?

Being in the UK, i don’t know much about Pandora, but I think you can cast direct from the Pandora app?  Can different family members still do this from their mobile devices at the same time?  

Userlevel 5
Badge +4

Pandora is certainly way out of line if it won’t allow different streams from a family account. That is almost unbelievable. Spotify and Amazon Music allow multiple streams from an individual account (provided the Sonos app is used to launch the streams, not Alexa or GA).  Have you added all the different Pandora family logins to your Sonos system?

Being in the UK, i don’t know much about Pandora, but I think you can cast direct from the Pandora app?  Can different family members still do this from their mobile devices at the same time?  

 

I hadn’t added all the logins to my Sonos account. I have been cognizant of not using the same user login to play Pandora from different locations, so I have one login for my phone, one login for Alexa, one login for my home sonos, one login for my office system. My thought was that I wouldn’t have any problems if I forgot and left a stream going in one location (which would be rare).

I already was mildly perturbed that Asking Alexa to start a pandora stream on a Sonos speaker counted as 2 streams (and thus the reason I have one user just for Alexa). Now this.

I actually already had/have a Spotify Family account and I tested streaming different playlists to different Sonos groups and it seems to work fine. I like Spotify a lot, but Radio stations don't work as well when launched from the Sonos app. I mostly use Spotify on my phone and Pandora on Sonos.

Interestingly, I am currently streaming 3 different Pandora streams to different rooms and haven’t gotten the warning for the past 3 hours. If I start getting the warning again, I think I’ll need to cancel my Pandora subscription and deal with the the Sonos Spotify playlist limitations.