aupeo

Aupeo! is a Berlin based personalised music streaming service similar to Last.FM, Spotify and Pandora. Aupeo offer both a free and premium service. The premium service costs either $49.95 per annum or $4.95 per month.

An English Language guide to the original Aupeo! service has been located here. The social networking features such as "Friend Station" and the mixtape feature have since been removed and are therefore no longer offered, either on the Aupeo! website or the Reciva radio.

As with all the integrated 3rd party services, a user account must be created on the providers site, in this instance Aupeo!. Once the account is live on Aupeo! then the log in credentials can be entered on the Reciva website. It is Reciva that will authenticate the user when accessing Aupeo! through a radio. Once the log in credentials have been entered onto Reciva's website (a once only event), a confirmation message states that "Your Aupeo account is set up correctly". Confusingly the Aupeo! site also has a 'Devices' section that appears to require the separate input of the radio's make, model and MAC address. These do not need to be completed for Reciva-based radios (presumably it was needed for Terratec models).

It is also worth noting that not all Reciva radios are Aupeo! enabled. A list of Aupeo! approved radios can be found here. Not all Aupeo! supporting Internet Radios are listed however but quite simply, if your radio offers My Aupeo! in it's menu structure then it is capable of streaming the Aupeo! service.

Depending on your radio model - My Aupeo! is located on the radio in either a sub menu called "Personal Radio" or is located under "My Stuff".

As mentioned, Aupeo! offer both a free service and a paid for subscription service. Menu items that require a subscription have an asterisk shown in front of the name.

Free Service : "Artist Station", Basic "Mood Radio", 13 "Aupeo! stations" & "Personal Station". Non intrusive Adverts. All streamed at 128kbps
Subscription Service: "Artist Station", Enhanced "Mood Radio", 64 "Aupeo Stations" & "Personal Station". No adverts and all streamed at 192kbps.

Whilst playing any track from any menu within Aupeo!, tracks can be flagged as "love" or "ban" by pressing the REPLY (sometimes known as ADD) button and then scrolling to the required answer before hitting 'Select'. This feature allows Aupeo! to generate a personalised stream based on your choices. Additionally, if you really don't like the track that is currently playing, selecting 'ban' will stop the stream immediately and another track will commence. Additionally, a third option "skip" enables you to immediately move to the next track without banning the current track if you so choose. N.B. Some radios have old firmware that does not allow the interactive features of the reply/add button. If you do not see a "fetching menu" message following the button press, you should check to see if newer firmware is available. If no new firmware is available then you can spend some time beforehand making choices on the Aupeo! website and those choices will influence what you hear on the radio streams. However without a firmware that allows interactivity, you will be unable to make realtime love & ban choices for the streamed songs on the radio.

Artist Station:. This utilises a search function that allows you to search for a chosen artist. This is achieved using the standard Reciva input technique of spinning the scroll wheel until the chosen character is in the middle of the screen and hitting Select. Input is completed by selecting the 'END' character. Aupeo! will provide you with a list of possible matches and you select the artist of your choice. In nearly all cases Aupeo! will start streaming after a handful of seconds. Occasionally you will receive an "unable to stream" message. The reasons for which are unknown, however experience has shown that repeated (2 or 3?) attempts to stream the content will eventually lead to the stream connecting successfully and start playing. On occasions selecting an artist will only stream that artist. On other occasions a pleasant selection of tunes from both the chosen artist and similar artists is streamed. However there are Instances when seemingly random musical tracks are offered. E.G. The author searched for the acoustic folk singer Katie Melua and was inexplicably offered Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' as the first track !

Mood Radio: This allows you to choose music to suit your mood. There are 10 moods offered from calm to aggressive, from happy to melancholic. Free account holders can just choose their mood whereas a subscription allows you the greater flexibility of being able to choose moods for differing musical genres so you can have "Calm RnB" or "Happy Jazz" for example. This can be quite interesting especially if you select some non standard combinations such as "Happy Blues" or "Relaxing Rock"!

Aupeo! Stations: Free accounts receive circa 13 stations from across the musical spectrum including classical, hip-hop, rock, jazz & blues etc. Subscribers receive circa 64 stations. See the Aupeo! website for details as to the stations offered.

Personal Station: This is a personalised stream that is generated by your love / ban choices. It can produce an eclectic selection of music if you've "loved" tracks by diverse artists in differing genres over a period of time.

The stream is 128kbps for free accounts or 192kbps for subscribers and for the author, has worked flawlessly without buffering. Sound quality as you would expect at those bitrates, is good.

Be aware that each track is sent separately. This means that each track needs to connect and then buffer before playing. Naturally, this means a gap of several seconds between tracks.

The link between Aupeo! and Reciva was further enhanced with Arthur Taylor joining Aupeo! in a senior position during October 2009 having spent around 2 years at Reciva. Whilst this does not mean that Reciva will receive any special treatment, it does mean that Aupeo! have someone who is very familiar with the Reciva radio.

The current Aupeo! service for Reciva Internet Radios is an excellent addition to your radio so it is worthwhile signing up on the Aupeo! website and enabling the service on Reciva. The free service is perfectly adequate but there are also additional benefits if you subscribe, the choice is yours!