Cookies used in the web player
The following table lists the cookies used by the web player, and what we use them for. These cookies will expire after 12 months.
| Cookie Name | Why do we use it? | Example value |
|---|---|---|
| announcement | A marker to ensure you only see any Radioplayer announcements once per session | true |
| guid | Unique identifiers set for each unique browser to allow for aggregated analysis | b05116d3-1015-45ec-a122 |
| interstitial | A marker to ensure you only see any radio-station provided advertising once per session | true |
| lastplayed | Contains a number which relates to the last station a listener listened to. | 1004 |
| listeninghistory | Contains a list of the radio stations you’ve listened to, so we can show it in your Recents list. | 1,2,3 |
| preferences | A cookie which stores whether a user has seen certain one-time messages in the console | true |
| recentsearches | Contains a list of your recent searches so that we can show them to you in the Search Panel. | ["football", "liverpool"] |
| policy | If you choose to opt-out of 'functional' or 'performance' cookies, the value stored in this cookie will ensure we respect that desire. | 111 |
| presets | A list of radio stations that you’ve added to your My Stations (favourites) | ["0:255","1:237","2:1320"] |
| primed | Allows Radioplayer to work well on Safari on iOS devices | true |
| rpsde_client_id | Used by Radioplayer to work out how many listeners a station has and how long they listen for. Does not include any user identifiable data. | e8d2a52f-3032-9ee3-79d4 |
| seencookieanno | Determines whether you have been shown the message describing how cookies are used to store station favourites. | true |
| stationlistprefix | Helps make the A-Z station list work well by storing the last letter you selected | r |
| volume | Remembers your last volume level value so you don’t have to keep changing it when you switch stations | 60 |
Managing cookies
The web console provides a link to the territory's cookie management page, which lists the users current cookie values and allows them to clear them. An example of this can be seen at (https://www.radioplayer.co.uk/cookiesv4/)
The user is also presented with a page when they first open the console that allows them to select which cookies they are comfortable with storing. The page allows you to select whether you wish to accept:
- Required
- Functional
- Performance
The cookie policy is stored in the policy cookie as a series of bits.
It is not possible to deselect 'required' cookies. The cookies created in here
are necessary for the player to work (e.g. the primed cookie, and the policy
cookie itself)
If the user rejects functional cookies then the following cookies will not be stored on the user's browser:
stationlistprefixlastplayedlisteninghistoryvolumesearchhistory
If the user rejects performance cookies then the following cookies will not be created:
guidrpsde_client_id
The cookie management page in the console itself also links to the territory's privacy policy and the manage cookies page.
Cookie lifecycle
When the player loads we initialise all cookies to make sure that we can keep hold of the cookie preferences. Once the listener has made his selection we remove any cookies that they do not give permission for us to use.
As part of setting the cookie preferences, we send an update to any 3rd party ad providers in case the listener has updated his do not track preferences.
Integrations
We issue requests to the following servers when the web player is playing a station.
- A Now Playing server, which tells us what tracks the station is playing. We reach out to this every 60 seconds (if the console has focus)
- A server that records when you start and stop listening to a station, and how long you listen for. This is used to record listener metrics
These servers would typically be named
- https://np.radioplayer.co.uk (i.e. 'now playing')
- https://fh-uk.radioplayer.org (i.e. 'Firehose' - where we send our listener data)
The latter uses the rpsed_client_id to make sure that we only record each listener once, although we don't know where they are or anything about them.
We also use a centralised cookie manager that allows us to move cookies with listener as they move from station to station. This is typically hosted at https://cookie.radioplayer.co.uk