Radioplayer is 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.
How do I listen to a radio station on Radioplayer via Alexa
Please use the following invocation: "Alexa, open Radioplayer and play <<station name>>".
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 the Admin panel in my.radioplayer.org - but do remember this will cause changes to happen in the mobile apps as well.
I have a new station and my station can't be found on Alexa
If your station has recently joined Radioplayer then the station might not be available on this hardware device immediately. Please allow a suitable interval for the API endpoints to update. Also please ensure that the Targets are correctly set for your audio streams. If in doubt, please raise a support ticket.
My station has been on Radioplayer a while but can't be found on Alexa
There are two possible reasons for this. Either you've not provided your stream URLs with the "Amazon Echo" Target or Alexa doesn't understand the name of your station. If the device mismatches your station to another station that's not you, it's due to Alexa's speech recognition. There are some things we can do to adjust 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 could be that the platform reverted to a lower bitrate audio stream. 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 Admin panel.
I want to opt out of having my station featured on Alexa
We don't recommend this as you could be 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 Alexa platform, open a ticket and we can address this.
