Use No-Code Radio Skills
With just your streaming URL and other station metadata, you can follow a no-code process to make your radio station available to Alexa. Before you start, check the prerequisites listed in Steps to Create a Music Skill.
What Is the Radio Skills Kit?
The Alexa Radio Skills Kit (RSK) is a simple interface where you can add a new radio station, publish updates to it, check its status, access station analytics, delete the station, or get support.
Radio station owners, not aggregators, are eligible to use the RSK portal. You should add a station only if you own and operate it. For example, in the United States, terrestrial radio stations are usually owned and operated by the entity that holds the station's Federal Communications Commission license.
If you have some software development experience, you can also use the Alexa Skills Kit Command Line Interface (ASK CLI) to create a radio skill. For details, see Create a new skill with the ASK CLI, and contact your Alexa Music representative.
RSK Features
Autoenabled skills
ASK custom skills require the user to enable the skill in their Alexa app before they can play the station. RSK skills, however, are autoenabled. All a customer has to do is request the station. Alexa then makes a playback announcement such as "Playing 101.2 Daily Horoscopes," and starts the stream.
Flexible requests
With most ASK custom skills, customers must either ask Alexa to “open” or “launch” a station skill or ask for a specific station. With the RSK, the customer request is flexible. Customers can ask for a station by name, alternative name, call sign, or frequency.
Location-based search
To improve accuracy, RSK supports location-based search. When a customer asks for a station, Alexa looks for stations nearby that match their request.
Advanced capabilities
RSK supports features such as multi-room playback, and setup of alarms or routines that include radio station playback. These advanced capabilities are not currently available through ASK custom skills.
Steps to make a radio station available to Alexa
To build, modify, and manage one or more radio stations with the RSK console, complete the following steps:
- Sign in.
- Add stations.
- Update stations.
- Enter catalog metadata.
- Delete stations.
- Check station status.
- Access station analytics.
- Test your radio skill.
- Troubleshoot issues.
- Get support.
Sign in
To learn more about no-code radio skills or to get started, use your Amazon developer account to sign in to the RSK console.
Add stations
You can publish new stations by listing station metadata—that is, basic information about your skill, such as its name and alternative names, its streaming URL, and the files for its logo artwork. Each new station is assigned a station ID, which is a unique identifier for the station in the RSK catalog. You can add one station at a time, or bulk-upload a group of stations.
After a submission or update, the ingestion process takes up to 72 hours. Submission or modification of stations in Great Britain and Ireland is a manual process that can take up to 3 weeks.
Update stations
You can edit and update station metadata, such as station name, alternative names, streaming URL, and station logo artwork. (The only field you can't edit is the station ID, which is unique to each station in the RSK catalog.) You can update station metadata for a single station or a group of stations.
Enter catalog metadata
Catalog metadata includes all information that identifies your station and its location.
Station name
The station name is the branded name of your radio station. This name appears on screened devices and is included in the playback announcement. If your station name has periods (for example, C.A.P.S.), Alexa pronounces each letter individually (for example, “C," "A," "P," "S”). If you want Alexa to pronounce the station name as a word, use an initial capital letter followed by lower-case letters (for example, “Caps”).
The following tabs show the number of alternative names permitted in each specified language.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and umlauts. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and umlauts. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and umlauts. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and umlauts. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and tildes. Optional field.
To capture all of the ways in which a customer might ask for your station, up to five alternative station names are allowed for each applicable language. Use commas to separate each alternative name. If the station name is not in English, include the English spelling. Don't use special characters such as accent marks and tildes. Optional field.
Other metadata
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
|
Artwork |
Station-branded artwork must meet the following criteria:
|
|
Band |
Band is optional and is not used in some countries. Leave blank, or click Bands and select from the list.
|
|
Call sign |
A station's call sign consists of a series of letters. Call signs aren't used in some countries. If your station has no call sign, repeat the primary station name here instead. Don't leave the field blank. |
|
City |
City in which your station is located. |
|
Country (see Locale) |
Some stations restrict playback to specific countries. Georestriction of Alexa streaming occurs only at the country level, not at the regional level. |
|
Country |
Make sure that the two-letter country code is listed. Don't spell out the name of the country. |
|
Custom skill ID |
If you already have an Alexa custom skill, provide the custom skill ID in your Alexa developer account (optional). |
|
Deprecation status |
To deprecate your custom skill after your RSK skill launches, choose Yes. Otherwise, choose No. Allow at least 4 months for disablement. In the meantime, don't remove the skill yourself, or the user receives an error message and can't initiate RSK playback. Instead, hide the skill (see Disable existing ASK custom skills). |
|
Domain |
The station's streaming URL must meet the following criteria:
|
|
Frequency |
Station frequency is represented by a series of numbers with commas or decimal points. If a station has multiple frequencies, choose the primary one—that is, the frequency a customer is most likely to ask for—or enter each frequency
as a separate station. For web-only stations, enter |
|
Genre |
Click Genres, and select up to three options from the tags in the list.
|
|
Language |
Either the primary language spoken on the radio station or the primary language Alexa supports in the country to which the station broadcasts. For a list, click Supported languages. For details, see Supported Alexa Features by Country for International Version Echo Devices.
|
|
Locale |
A locale refers to a language and the location (country) in which it's spoken. The language is usually represented by two lower-case letters, such as |
|
Latitude |
The latitude is the horizontal geographic coordinate where the station is located. It should be in the range of –90 to 90, with a decimal point. To find latitude for your station’s address, search online for instructions. |
|
Longitude |
The longitude is the vertical geographic coordinate where the station is located. It should be in the range of –180 to 180, with a decimal point. To find longitude for your station’s address, search online for instructions. |
|
Slogan |
The station's tagline (optional). Special characters (accent marks, tilde, and umlaut, for example) are acceptable. |
Disable existing ASK custom skills
If you've already set up your station as a custom ASK skill, you can also make it available through RSK. Station requests from users who have already enabled your custom skill will continue to route to that skill. To set up the custom skill for eventual removal, find the Disable custom skill field, and then select Yes.
Allow at least 4 months for disablement. In the meantime, don't remove the custom skill yourself. If you do, existing users receive an error message and cannot initiate playback. Instead, hide the custom skill so that new users can't enable it. To do so, sign in to the Alexa Developer Console, and then select the checkbox next to skill you want to hide. From the drop-down list, select Hide. The skill can't be disabled until you hide it.
Delete stations
You can delete your station(s) at any time, one by one or in bulk.
Check station status
Station status for each of your radio stations can be found on the primary RSK Console page. The status will update dynamically when you make changes to your stations.
Your station is ready to submit when all required fields are included and metadata has passed initial validation. Your changes will be ingested when you submit the station.
A status of In progress means that the station addition, update, or deletion is being validated for accuracy and ingested into the RSK.
Your review is required if the metadata for one or more stations didn't pass validation. For example, validation fails if the station name contains profanity.
To fix validation errors
- To see the required updates, in the far right column of the pipeline page, hover over View Errors, and then use the Edit feature to correct your station metadata.
- Click Save.
- If the changes you made meet all validation requirements, the station status shows as Ready to Submit.
- In the navigation bar at the bottom of the page, click Submit.
- To confirm, click Yes, Submit.
The ingestion process takes up to 72 hours from the time you submit a new station or make changes to your station. When your changes are live on Alexa, the station status is updated to Published.
Deletion is complete when the station is no longer available on Alexa.
Access station analytics
The Analytics Dashboard lets you access station metrics, such as the unique number of customers listening to your station on Alexa and the number of times the station has been accessed. Station metrics become available about 48 hours after station publication.
Test your radio skill
To test a station, ask Alexa to play a station name, or use the station's alternative name, call sign, or frequency. Your customers can use the same identifiers. They don't have to enable any new skill to access the station, because the catalog content is autoenabled.
Radio station frequencies aren't unique. Station 101.2, for example, is a different station in one country or region than it is in another. If a customer asks Alexa to play a particular frequency but provides no other information, Alexa uses the customer's location to determine which station to play. As a result, testing by station frequency alone in different regions produces different results. To avoid ambiguity, provide other identifying information, such as the station name, in your request (for example, "Alexa, play 102.1 Developer News.").
Troubleshoot issues
Before you contact us for support, try the following troubleshooting steps.
To fix an RSK issue
Get support
Use the following steps to provide feedback or report an issue.
To contact RSK Support
Related topics
- Catalog Reference
- Alexa Music, Radio, and Podcast Skill API Reference Overview
- Alexa Music, Radio, and Podcast Skill API Components Reference
Last updated: Nov 27, 2023