Glossary · The people and the places
HBCU radio station
An HBCU radio station is a station licensed to a Historically Black College or University. They range from student-run college stations to full public radio affiliates, and they carry programming, formats and audiences that general lists of submission-friendly stations rarely mention at all.
Structurally they are different to approach. More often a named person than a form. More often a phone number than an inbox. More often a relationship built over a semester than a transaction completed in an afternoon. That is exactly why they get left out of scraped contact lists: there is nothing convenient to scrape.
For an artist in hip-hop, R&B, gospel or jazz this is one of the most direct routes to an audience that will actually engage with the record, and the least contested, because most submission services do not know these stations exist.
33 of the 1363 verified stations are HBCU licensed. 8 are confirmed accepting and a further 18 almost certainly are, a split that says most of them have a person to send to but no formal submission page.
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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