Radio discovery in smart speakers: The gatekeeping function of voice assistant platforms and aggregators

Internet-connected smart speakers have expanded the reach of radio by enabling easy access to broadcasts and podcasts from around the world. However, access to radio on smart speakers depends on the policies of voice assistant platforms including Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri; these platforms ultimately determine which audio services are available to users and which are excluded. Our paper presents findings from an empirical study of smart speakers in Australia. Using a device testing method, we compared the availability and discoverability of 373 radio stations across the major smart speaker brands. Overall, we find that a third of Australian radio stations are not available on smart speakers, with particularly poor availability on Apple devices. We argue that this reflects a larger problem for radio stations, which risk becoming disintermediated from the streaming media ecosystem in favour of on-demand services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music. Our analysis also considers the role of radio aggregators (including TuneIn, RadioApp, and iHeart) in this opaque market.