Radioplayer is now available on Amazon Alexa enabled devices in the UK, such as the Amazon Echo and Amazon Dot. These are voice-enabled audio devices which allow listeners to access their favourite stations from Radioplayer. Here are some frequently asked questions about the service.
Which streams do you use for this service?
As far as we can, we're using high bitrate streams. We recommend 160k or better. Where a station doesn't have a high bitrate stream, we fall back to your mobile low bitrate stream instead. If you wish to change the streams we use, you can do so from your Station Control Panel - but do remember this will cause changes to happen in the mobile apps as well.
I'm a new station and my station can't be found on Alexa
If you've been live on Radioplayer for less than three months, you might not be available on this hardware device right away. We're taking the time to make sure everyone's streams work properly on the device and are adding stations in batches each quarter as we test them. Be patient!
I've been on Radioplayer a while but can't be found on Alexa
There are two possible reasons for this. Either you've not provided any stream URLs at all in your station profile, or Alexa isn't understanding the name of your station. If the device is mismatching your station to another station that's not you, it's due to its speech recognition. There are some things we can do to tweak this so please open a ticket and tell us what you said to Alexa and what it found.
My station plays on the Amazon device but it sounds scratchy
This is because the system has had to revert to your mobile 48k streams. If you have a higher bitrate stream (such as the one you use for your browser-based Radioplayer) try adding that as a high bitrate stream in the station control panel.
I want to opt out of having my station featured on Alexa
We don't recommend this as it's turning listeners away - most of whom are at home. It's a captive audience. If you have a regulatory reason for needing to come off the platform, open a ticket and we'll see what we can do.