Most of the smart-speaker conversation is about Alexa, but Google's speakers — Home, Nest, Nest Audio, Nest Mini — move real listening hours too, and they work completely differently. Where Alexa gives your station its own voice app, Google's assistant mostly resolves radio requests through a directory: TuneIn. Understanding that one difference tells you the whole Google strategy.
The Default Path: Get on TuneIn
When someone says "Hey Google, play [something like your station name]" — or just "play some jazz" — Google Assistant usually answers with a TuneIn result. TuneIn is the directory feeding Google's speakers, plus dozens of car dashboards, smart TV apps, and TuneIn's own apps. One free submission covers all of it.
Submission is free at TuneIn's broadcaster portal: station name, stream URL (HTTPS, MP3/AAC/HLS — same rules as everywhere), logo, genre, description. Approval takes anywhere from days to a few weeks, and the listing quietly starts working across everything TuneIn powers.
The catch is the same one TuneIn has on Alexa: your station sits in a giant catalog, and ambiguous names get resolved by whatever the matching favors. A distinctive name does fine. A generic one gets lost.
The Direct Path: a Google Assistant Action
Google's equivalent of an Alexa Skill is a Google Assistant Action — a voice app that responds to your invocation directly. It's real, it works, and almost no radio station has one, because Google has spent years deprioritizing the platform: the Actions console has been repeatedly reworked, radio-specific templates have been deprecated and revived, and third-party support has thinned out. An Action is worth building for a station that lives entirely in Google's ecosystem and wants the direct-match experience there. For most stations, the effort-to-payoff is poor compared to the alternatives — and compared to a $50 Alexa skill covering the larger voice platform.
The Reliable Path: the Android App
Every Google speaker can be told to play audio from a phone — "Hey Google, cast [app name]" — and a branded Android radio app is the one surface where Google listeners are guaranteed to find you, voice command or not. The app route has none of the directory uncertainty, it puts your station in the Play Store's search results, and it travels with the listener to every device they own, speakers included. For stations serious about the Google side, this is the sturdier play.
How the Three Compare
- TuneIn listing: free, covers the most Google surfaces with zero maintenance — start here
- Assistant Action: direct voice match, but the platform is unstable and third-party support is thin
- Android app: guaranteed presence, Play Store discovery, works with casting — the most durable Google investment
Submit to TuneIn first (free, covers Google speakers plus cars and TVs). Skip the Action unless you have a specific reason. Put the real budget into the Android app, which covers Google's speakers and every phone on earth's biggest mobile OS at once.
Stream Requirements on the Google Side
Same story as everywhere else: HTTPS stream, MP3/AAC/HLS format, stable availability. Google doesn't run a separate certification for TuneIn listings — TuneIn's own submission checks do the work — but the requirements rhyme across every platform because they all descend from the same streaming realities. A stream that passes Amazon's checks passes Google's.
Which points to the practical takeaway: fix your stream once — HTTPS, supported codec — and every smart speaker platform on earth opens up at the same time. The work isn't per-platform. It's once.
Cover Both Speaker Worlds
An Alexa Skill ($50) covers Amazon's speakers, and an Android app ($100) covers Google's speakers and every Android phone — both one-time, both paid after launch. Add a free TuneIn submission and you're on essentially every speaker made.
See Both Options