Use of Pianobar for Pandora is limited at best and isn’t even supported by the preferred HA installation or using HAOS. It is about time HA gets with the times and updates this Legacy Integration!
Hard to conceptualize “get with the times” and “Pandora” in the same breath 
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Snarky comments aside, it does look like there is some movement for Pandora support in Music Assistant. This might be something to watch @DanGarion
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I’ve been one of those commenting on that thread! 
I’ve tried to set up pianobar a few times in the past but never was able to make use of it. Now I can’t since I run HAOS so until there is another solution I’m stuck. I’ve used Pandora for well over 10 years I’ve TRIED multiple times to move to another service but unfortunately, nothing else has the main Pandora feature I feel is the most important thing to have, which is the curated stations.
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They do, might not be as good as pandora but they all have stations that you can create and it will play similar music. I’ve never used pandora, I’ve used IHeart and Spotify, and Amazon, all 3 have this.
But where? All I have ever found are playlists, which are just lists of music I like. I’ve never located a way to create a station that plays music I like (which I can thumbs up/down).
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Just search for an artist, one of the options found will be “< the artist > Station”, it will start with a song from that artist then introduce similar ones beyond that. As you listen you can thumb up or down things and that list/station will remain in your recently played.
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In Spotify, if you click on the more options (ellipses) menu on any Artist or Song you can go to a “radio station” inspired by that selection. It works pretty well im my opinion, and I was a long time Pandora user many moons ago.
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Out of pure curiosity @DanGarion would you mind sharing a bit more about your usecase? I’m curious the role Home Assitant plays in your setup and how you are using automations with your radio stations and/or speaker endpoints.
I’m going to try and give Spotify Premium another honest run through again for 2 months (along with the rest of the family) to see if it can fit our needs.
@DanGarion
If giving Spotify a try on Home Assistant, you might check out the SpotifyPlus Card.
Hope it helps!
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I was the OP for that referenced thread about supporting Pandora. I find Pandora spectacularly good at creating curated stations that give me the type of music I want to hear at any given time. I have no patience to create my own play lists.
But I will indeed have to check out one or more of the mentioned alternatives that are already supported in HA / MA. If they are capable of tailoring my stations in a very similar manner, that’s certainly a lot simpler than creating a whole new integration.
Thanks for the discussion!
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I’m with Dan, Pandora stations are 10x better than any other service. I have 1 or 2 stations that are over 10 years old and they’re perfectly tuned to what I want to hear. I even have Spotify premium currently because my sister uses it and she added me to her family plan. But I usually only use it for podcasts, not music. I just couldn’t get it to curate similar stations to Pandora.
I would love to be able to start a Pandora station on one of my google homes as an alarm clock so I can have my entire wakeup routine in home assistant rather than 2 different places. Right now I have the Pandora part setup in the google home app, and the rest of my automations for waking up(lights on, fan off) in home assistant. As it stands, I have to disable 2 automations if for instance school is cancelled because of snow.
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FYI, my family and I took a 2 month test drive of Spotify and we ended up with the same conclusion we have always had and went back to Pandora.
Dan,
You’re living my life. Once you train your entire family on how to use a service, it’s impossible to tell them “now you have to use Spotify”. All I heard was “Spotify sucks”. So Alexa is still powered on and the VPE and Sat1 devices now sit in a drawer.
Curated stations are WAY better on Pandora,they always have been. I don’t get it… the poll put Pandora at the very top of what folks want that’s missing. Voice assistants are all the rage right now and the #1 music streaming service is still missing from MA.
A little effort on this will go a long way.
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The HA app has a sensor that can pull your phones next alarm time as a sensor. You can tie the HA wakeup automation to your next alarm so it automatically updates to when you’re waking up, or if its outside of certain hours, the automation won’t fire. It’s made my life so much easier.
Pandora would still be nice though.