NPR Listening Service

Name: NPR Listening Service API
Brand: NPR Listening Service
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentMediaAudio Processingoauth29 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Fetch personalized NPR audio recommendations, search for episodes, list channels, and submit listener ratings to shape future recommendations.

Connect the NPR Listening Service to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the NPR Listening Service, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with NPR Listening Service API.

Retrieve a personalised list of audio recommendations for the logged-in listener

Submit listener ratings to record completion, skip, or share events that shape future recommendations

Search for audio and aggregations matching a query, returning ranked recommendation items

List the available NPR One listening channels for a listener

GET STARTED

Start building with NPR Listening Service API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for NPR Listening Service, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for NPR Listening Service, keeping it validated and agent-ready. The NPR Listening Service delivers personalised audio recommendations to NPR One client apps. It exposes the main recommendation feed for a logged-in listener, channel listings, search-driven recommendations, organisation-scoped feeds, aggregation feeds, listening history, and a ratings endpoint that records listener feedback to shape future recommendations. All endpoints require an OAuth 2.0 access token issued by the NPR Authorization Service.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use NPR Listening Service API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Personalised Audio Stream for NPR One Apps

An NPR One client app calls GET /v2/recommendations on launch to receive a queue of audio segments tailored to the listener — newscasts first, then stories, podcasts, and station promos blended by the recommendation engine. As each item plays, the app submits a rating with POST /v2/ratings so the next call returns a refined queue.

Call GET /v2/recommendations with the listener's access token, then submit POST /v2/ratings with completion=true after each item plays to the end.

Search Across NPR Audio

Listeners often want to jump to a specific topic — election coverage, a favorite show, an interview they remember. GET /v2/search/recommendations returns a ranked list of matching audio and aggregation items, which client apps render as a search results page with playback hooks back into the recommendation queue.

Call GET /v2/search/recommendations with q=climate policy and the listener's access token, then play the top-ranked item on the listener's device.

Local Station Discovery via Organisations

Listeners often want a feed scoped to their local NPR member station, optionally filtered by category. GET /v2/organizations/{orgId}/recommendations returns a feed for that station, and GET /v2/organizations/{orgId}/categories/{category}/recommendations narrows it to news, arts, or another category. This powers the local view inside NPR One client apps.

Call GET /v2/organizations/{orgId}/categories/news/recommendations with the listener's home station orgId to render a local-news feed.

Agent-Driven Voice Listening Session

A voice agent on a smart speaker fetches the next NPR One recommendation, plays it, and reports the completion event back through Jentic. Because Jentic exposes both the recommendation fetch and the rating post as discrete operations, the agent can handle the full listening loop without bespoke integration code.

Search Jentic for 'get the next npr audio recommendation', execute GET /v2/recommendations, play the first item, then call POST /v2/ratings with the rating event.

Key Endpoints

9 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for npr listening service, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/v2/recommendations

Get the listener's personalised recommendation queue

POST

/v2/ratings

Submit a rating to shape future recommendations

GET

/v2/search/recommendations

Search NPR audio and aggregations

GET

/v2/channels

List the listener's available channels

GET

/v2/organizations/{orgId}/recommendations

Get recommendations scoped to a specific organisation

GET

/v2/organizations/{orgId}/categories/{category}/recommendations

Get recommendations for a category from a specific organisation

GET

/v2/aggregation/{aggId}/recommendations

Get recommendations from a specific aggregation independent of the personalised queue

GET

/v2/history

Get recent ratings the listener has submitted

GET

/v2/recommendations

Get the listener's personalised recommendation queue

POST

/v2/ratings

Submit a rating to shape future recommendations

GET

/v2/search/recommendations

Search NPR audio and aggregations

GET

/v2/channels

List the listener's available channels

GET

/v2/organizations/{orgId}/recommendations

Get recommendations scoped to a specific organisation

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Listener OAuth 2.0 access tokens are stored in the Jentic vault and injected into the Authorization header on each Listening call. Tokens never leave the credential layer or appear in agent prompts.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like 'get the next npr audio recommendation' and Jentic returns the GET /v2/recommendations operation with its input schema, removing the need to inspect the spec by hand.

Time to first call

Direct NPR Listening integration: 2-3 days including Authorization, ratings wiring, and recommendation queue handling. Through Jentic: under an hour once a token is in the vault — search, load schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

NPR Authorization Service

Issues the OAuth 2.0 tokens required on every Listening Service call.

Call Authorization first to obtain a token, then use it with Listening for the recommendation queue.

Complementary

NPR Identity Service

Holds the profile, follows, and favorite station that personalise the Listening feed.

Pair with Identity to read the listener's follows before requesting recommendations.

Alternative

Spotify Web API

Music and podcast streaming platform with its own recommendation and search APIs.

Choose Spotify when the use case is broad music streaming rather than NPR-specific public-radio audio.

Alternative

YouTube Data API

Video and audio content search and discovery on YouTube.

Choose YouTube when the listener wants any creator content, not curated NPR public-radio audio.

FAQs

Specific to using NPR Listening Service API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for NPR Listening Service?

NPR does not publish an OpenAPI specification for the Listening Service. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call NPR Listening Service via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the NPR Listening Service use?

Every endpoint requires an OAuth 2.0 bearer access token issued by the NPR Authorization Service. Jentic holds the listener's token in its encrypted vault and adds the Authorization header on each call, so agents never see the raw token.

Can I get personalised audio recommendations with the NPR Listening Service?

Yes. GET /v2/recommendations returns a personalised queue for the logged-in listener, and submitting feedback to POST /v2/ratings refines future calls. The same engine also powers organisation-scoped and category-scoped feeds via /v2/organizations/{orgId}/recommendations.

How do I record a listener rating through Jentic?

Search Jentic with 'submit npr rating', load POST /v2/ratings, and execute it with the rating event (completion, skip, share, or thumbs) along with the media id and the listener's access token. The next /v2/recommendations call reflects the new feedback.

Does the NPR Listening Service support search?

Yes. GET /v2/search/recommendations accepts a query string and returns a ranked list of audio and aggregation items, which is how NPR One client apps build their topic-search experience.