Error: Access denied

[ASoTNetworks]

Subject of the issue

Getting Access denied errors sometimes when receiving new playlist. (i) Receiving new playlist... Error: Access denied. Try again later.

Your environment

• version of pianobar
  • 2020.11.28-dev and 2019.02.14 from repo
• your Linux distribution and release version
  • Ubuntu 20.04
• ffmpeg/libav version and the flags it was compiled with (if you compiled yourself)
  • 4.2.4-1ubuntu0.1
• your config file
  • defaults

Steps to reproduce

Start the program and play sometimes it happens immediately or when trying to get new playlists in between.

Expected behaviour

Should not have access denied.

Actual behaviour

It will display the error and stops playing. (i) Receiving new playlist... Error: Access denied. Try again later.

[PromyLOPh]

Is it still happening? Usually this is just a temporary issue when Pandora is doing maintenance.

[ASoTNetworks]

Yes it have been happening for a while now.

[PromyLOPh]

I’m not sure what I can do about that, since this is a server-side error.

[K37V1N]

This is happening only for the QuickMix station, on my setup anyway. Every other station plays just fine, but the QuickMix one freezes playback. So if you happen to have QuickMix station as your "autostart" song in your config, then you'll get this error. Any idea why the QuickMix option is messing up?

[ASoTNetworks]

That explains why. I am also using the QuickMix station.

[PromyLOPh]

Interesting. I remember Pandora officially switched from providing a “QuickMix” to “Shuffle Stations” and the Android client for example explicitly requests shuffle stations via includeShuffleInsteadOfQuickMix. Can either of you @K37V1N or @ASoTNetworks successfully pick QuickMix stations using the x keybinding?

[K37V1N]

When I try using X to select quickmix stations then I get: /!\ Please select a QuickMix station first.

My free premium trial for Pandora also just ran out, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it or not?

[PromyLOPh]

Actually, I’ve seen issues when the free trial runs out before. Years ago there was a notification API, which needed to be called before any station worked again. Can you run the web client once and then try again with pianobar?

[K37V1N]

I went into the pandora webpage and it auto-logged me in from the last time. I tried the "Shuffle Stations" and it kept telling me that I needed to change stations because there were no more songs to play... which was weird. It also notified me that my Premium Trial had expired. I Logged out of the pandora account, and then logged back in, and the "Shuffle Stations" was set to "Off" even though I had left it "on" before I logged off. I tried turning on "Shuffle Stations" again and this time I didn't get any error.

I went back to my Pi Device and started Pianobar and hit X and it gave me the same "/!\ Please select a QuickMix station first." So I stopped Pianobar.

I'm also using a web frontend for pianobar, called Patiobar, I started my patiobar script and went to the Website for it, and selected "QuickMix" from my list of stations... and the QuickMix is working from there somehow?! Normally when I select a station through Patiobar website it highlights the station button with color, but when I select QuickMix there is no highlight color on anystation including the QuickMix station... very odd.

[PromyLOPh]

That sounds indeed what I encountered with the notification API. I have an extremely old branch with some code to “dismiss” that, but no way of testing it unfortunately.

[ASoTNetworks]

Can either of you @K37V1N or @ASoTNetworks successfully pick QuickMix stations using the x keybinding?

I have tried it and it seems like that resolves it? It have been playing fine on and off for a few days now.