Radio Skills Kit from Alexa is a free, no-code solution for radio providers to create, manage, and promote radio stations on Alexa. Get started and unlock the opportunity of making your content available on hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices by onboarding your station through one self-service console. Simple and fast onboarding allows your station to be online and streaming within a few days.
You may be familiar with a ‘custom skill’ service from providers at a price point, these are fundamentally different to the Radio Skills Kit process, and we’ve detailed the reasons why below;
Alexa Radio Skills Kit (RSK)
Purpose:
Ideal for radio stations and audio stream providers looking for a quick and simple way to make their live stream available on Alexa-enabled devices.
Key Features:
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Optimized for live audio streaming.
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No coding required — setup is form-based via the Amazon Developer Console.
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Supports basic voice commands out-of-the-box:
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“Alexa, play [Station Name]”
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“Alexa, stop”
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“Alexa, resume”
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Works with your stream URL (e.g., MP3 or AAC endpoints).
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Amazon hosts the skill and manages invocation logic.
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Quick to deploy and simple to manage.
Limitations:
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Only supports basic audio playback.
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Minimal customization — advanced interactions or dynamic content are not supported.
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Best suited for always-on stations, not podcasts or interactive content.
Alexa Custom Skill
Purpose:
A fully customizable, developer-driven solution for building rich, interactive voice experiences.
Key Features:
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Complete control over the voice interaction model and logic.
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Can support advanced features such as:
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Menus and navigation prompts
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User accounts and personalization
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On-demand content (e.g., podcast episodes)
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Multi-turn conversations and custom commands
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Requires programming skills (typically Node.js or Python, often on AWS Lambda).
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Can integrate with external APIs, databases, and authentication systems.
Use Cases:
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On-demand podcast directories
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News briefings
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Interactive games or quizzes
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Multi-station streaming apps with search functionality
Limitations:
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Requires significant development time and technical expertise.
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Needs ongoing maintenance and hosting infrastructure.
Please Note: We offer a free managed submission service for Radio Skills Kit for existing customers, so you don’t have to handle this process yourself. If you’d like us to take care of it for you, please contact our support team for assistance.
This guide is intended for stations who:
A) Already have a custom Alexa skill and wish to remove it from the Skill Store, choosing instead to migrate using the Radio Skills Kit process.
B) Prefer to handle the submission process independently, either because you already have experience or feel confident doing so. (Note: this service is still free for existing customers if you’d like us to manage it.)
GETTING STARTED WITH ALEXA RADIO SKILLS KIT (RSK)
- Sign up for a free Alexa Developer account here.
- Once signed in, head to the Alexa Radio Skills Hit homepage.
- Click ‘Add New Station’ at the top of your page.
- Follow all of the form requirements, entering the information to the best of your knowledge – there are handy tooltips to help you along the way.
- When you get to station art URL – this must be an accessible public link that hosts your station artwork in the format 600×600 pixels, and be in a valid image format such as JPG or PNG. Alexa does not host images, so this link needs to be live and always accessible. If you have a web radio player hosted with us, we can provide you with an image URL that you can use.
- Your stream domain is the streaming URL that you use to provide to other players/platforms that contains your live broadcast. This must be a secure stream in the format HTTPS. All of our streaming customers receive a secure HTTPS link, which they can use and it’s in the format https://listen.streamaudio.co/proxy/yourstation/stream in most cases.
- If you have an existing custom skill on the Alexa skill store, and you’d like the Alexa team to remove this as part of your submission, please enter the custom skill ID in the form, you can grab this from your developer console and is in the format amzn1.ask.skill.a8fd00ec-b0e9-47f6-97ee-034be07d1007.
- Hit submit, and it’s as easy as that!
The submission process can take up to 3 weeks, and we find Alexa are not very good at giving you updates, so you may have to chase them up after a while for any updates.
As we say, if you’re not confident in doing this yourself, we offer a free managed submission service for existing streaming customers.
