Can Alexa Play The Radio?

Alexa is the most hyped and talked-about voice assistant that is changing the way human spend their time at home or even at work. This smart AI assistant is nothing less than your human assistant who is at your back and calls all through the day and even at night.

In the United States alone, Alexa is being used by 40 million users according to recent stats for the year 2021. Although it is being used by countless customers across the globe, most users are not fully familiar with the potential of Alexa.

That is to say that not all users can answer what Alexa can do for them to the peak extent. The general public considers the Alexa as a smart AI speaker that is designed only for commanding it to turn on or off your home lights. 

Alexa does control your home lights, can switch between channels of your smart TV for you, and can also play some streaming music services for you. Haven’t you heard about that? Well, this is not a secret that Alexa devices can also be used as stereo or mini speakers for your home. 

These portable Alexa cum home speakers are wireless and will rely on Bluetooth technology to let you enjoy some cool music or even play your media stored in the connected devices. You can get to know how to use your Alexa as a speaker at home in our previous article on our website. 

Now that you are familiar with the use of Alexa as a smart home speaker you must be itching to know if this smart assistant is also capable of being used as a radio device. Well, definitely it can play radio stations too for you.  

Can Alexa Play The Radio Stations?

As we have stated earlier that the Alexa speakers can be used as home mini speakers that are wireless and Bluetooth powered to play streaming music services for you. Similar these speakers are also capable of playing radio stations for you.

To play radio on your Alexa device let’s say your amazon echo dot device, you would have to connect a media source device and play your radio channel on that specific. 

Well, the process is pretty much the same with playing the music and media on your wireless speaker. Following the same steps, you can enjoy listening to your radio channels through your Alexa. You have to pair your media source device such as your smartphone (both iOS and Android).

After pairing your media device using Bluetooth technology, you can simply play your music, movie, or even radio channel and your Alexa speaker will play the audio in a louder voice for you. 

But the process of playing a radio channel through Alexa is not as simple as playing your music. This is because you would have to use internet connectivity for assessing the FM radio channels.

This is because Alexa has no inbuilt FM tuning and will therefore rely on the internet radio channels for playing through its speakers. 

Alexa can even set radio schedules where your radio streaming will automatically begin without having you manually convert your Alexa into a radio player rather than a smart AI assistant. You can consider this as setting a reminder for tuning to radio station # 1 at 8 pm and at the specified time instead of playing a reminder notification for you, the Alexa will directly play your radio station. 

How To Play Alexa Radio Stations?

Now without wasting any extra breath, let us head straight to setting your Alexa as the radio player.  The process of playing radio stations on Alexa is very simple and easy.

The only hurdle in playing radio stations will be your locality since different locations across the globe offer different skills of Alexa and even different radio stations.

Follow the given instructions to use your Alexa for playing the radio station 

• Take out your smartphone and download the Alexa app. The app is freely available on the app store
• After installing the Alexa app set it up for the first time use and run it by following the on-screen instructions.
• After that look at the bottom right corner of your screen (the Alexa app homepage). At the bottom end, you will see the Menu button click on it to enter the menus.
• From under the Menu. Select Skills and Games.
• Skills and games will show different features that may be somewhat different depending on your region. Look for the featured categories (it will apparently be at the top of your screen displaying the skills and games. 
• The featured categories will show you a search box. Enter radio in it to look for a radio feature.
• After searching, tap on the radio to checkmark it. 
• Once the radio feature is activated a drop-down list of available radio playing apps will be displayed. 

These apps are region-specific and only the available apps of your locality will be shown.  For example, if you are a resident of Canada you will see Radio player Canada or My Tuner Radio. Click on the specific app you want to use by putting a checkmark on the box before the app name. 

• After enabling the radio player app, you would have to launch it by clicking on the launch option.
• After launching the radio player app, look for the specific radio channel and click on its name. 
• Your radio channel will start playing and its voice will be coming through your Alexa speakers. 

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