Google Assistant devices such as the Nest Hub and Nest Mini are handy for a lot of things, and many folks use them for music above all else. But if you’re trying to use radio stations from services such as Pandora via a Google Home routine or an Assistant command, you may have noticed that the functionality is partially broken.
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Over the past month or so, there have been a number of Google Assistant users noticing that trying to play music from radio stations fails to work through both Google Assistant commands and Google Home routines.
This occurs with services such as Pandora and Tune-In, which play generated playlists based on a specific genre, or stream a real radio station. Reports on Google’s Nest forums show some affected users from roughly a month ago, as well as a thread on Reddit where quite a few users report seeing the issue pop up in the past few days.
Top comment by Dj Hook
I've been having broken routine issues with YouTube Premium Music in or off routines. I can't even walk into a room and say, turn on the light no more. I have to add which light (I have Philips Hue lights all through my house) by name, in a specific way, that I have wrote in the command just to turn it on. And then I have to make another routine for off. I have Google Assistants in every room with lights. Oh did I mention that I have to make a routine for every device and action now. I have a smart home. So this goes for every outlet, the vacuum, curtains, smart plugs, everything needs a routine made for it to partially work with a slow response, reaction if it does work. I've complained in the feedback and nothing was done. I use to have a good morning routine that ended with my YouTube Premium music playlist. It use to worked in the beginning. Now it can't find my YouTube Premium Music playlist or specific songs, if I'm requesting to hear it in a routine or not. (YouTube Premium is now $26.00 a month. It started off at $14.99. I'm about to cancel it)
When this happens, Google Assistant and Home routines fail to start playing music, and instead simply responds with something along the lines of “Sorry, I didn’t understand.”
Google has yet to acknowledge the problem from what we’ve seen.
This isn’t the only issue with routines ongoing at the moment. Late last year we reported on a problem where sleep timers weren’t working through routines, and that appears to still be ongoing. Some Lenovo Smart Clock owners are also seeing problems with YouTube Music specifically, with the service unable to play personal playlists through routines. That problem is, oddly, only occurring on Smart Clock devices. Another user similarly reports having Spotify broken on just one Assistant speaker, though it wasn’t mentioned which one.
Are you running into issues with radio stations on Google Assistant or Home routines? Let us know in the comments below.
More on Google Home:
- The Google Home app can now remote control your Xbox
- Setting up a Matter device with Google Home on Android is delightfully easy [Gallery]
- The Google Home app is now the easiest way to control the Philips Hue Play HDMI Sync box
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