Glossary · The people and the places
Community radio
Community radio is a non-commercial station licensed to a local non-profit and programmed largely by volunteers from the area it serves. It answers to its listeners and members rather than to advertisers, so its schedule is usually built from individual shows with individual hosts.
Community stations are the most open part of the dial and the least systematic. Many have no submission form, no central music director and no policy page, because the person who would write one is a volunteer with a day job. The route in is a show and a human being, not a process.
That informality cuts both ways. There is rarely a queue to join, and a host who likes your record can play it the same week. But nothing is owed to you, follow-ups are noticed, and a brusque email to somebody doing this unpaid on a Tuesday night does lasting damage.
430 of the 1363 verified stations are community stations. Of the 273 confirmed accepting submissions across all of them, 9 route music to a show or a host rather than to one central inbox, and community stations are heavily represented in that group.
Pick your sound and region on Rotation and each of these stations shows its real submission contact and the exact rules it posts: clean edit, WAV, form or mail. Checked by hand and kept current. No station here paid to be listed.
Open my sheet →Radio is the free half, and it stays that way. Every station here is free to reach and no station ever pays to be listed. The Doors is the other half: 100 verified places that are not radio, sync libraries, music supervisors, festivals, contests, live sessions and the music press, 43 of which can actually pay an artist. It also lists the 162 we opened and refused, with the reason each one failed, because most lists of this kind are stale and the rejections are the part nobody else will show you. $9.99, the 2026 Q3 edition →
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