Amazon announced a new smart speaker feature that creates a seamless process for both radio stations and listeners. Listeners can now access a station by asking Alexa to play their favorite stations (“Alexa, play [station name]”) and it doesn’t require any heavy lifting of stations.

In the past, some Paragon clients were not able to overcome the confusing hurdles caused by the need to create an original Alexa skill. This lack of “technical know-how” created real missed opportunities for many medium to small market stations that just did not have the tech staffing resources within their company.  With this new Alexa feature, those hurdles are now gone.

Here are four reasons your radio station should jump on the new Alexa feature:

  1. Expand your listener base – The easier it is to access your station, the more listeners you will acquire. Half of all internet users in the United States have smart speakers, and of those, 94.2 million are Amazon Alexa owners.
  1. Easier for your listeners – Prior to the new Alexa “command” option for listeners, extra steps were required to access your station on Alexa (like downloading a new skill). With this rollout, listeners simply command, “Alexa, play [station name]”. No added steps are necessary, which will ultimately increase loyal listenership, as well as station discovery.
  1. Increase station discovery – Amazon support is available for stations to include an alternate station name, call sign or frequency, as well as a location-based search option that provides increased discovery opportunities.
  1. Simplified and painless onboarding process for your station – Now for the best part! It is no longer necessary for stations to spend time and money on developing their own skill for listeners to have the ability to listen on Alexa. Streaming aggregators like TuneIn are no longer necessary for stations or Alexa listeners. With the new system, stations simply provide their streaming URLs and metadata through an effortless intake form.

To get started on the new Alexa smart speaker code-free radio onboarding, email rsk-onboarding@amazon.com.

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