Glossary · The rules
Safe harbor
The safe harbor is the overnight window, 10pm to 6am, in which a US broadcast station may air indecent material. Outside those hours a licensed station is accountable for the content it broadcasts, which is the reason so many stations ask artists for a clean edit.
It explains a lot of behaviour that otherwise looks arbitrary. When a station tells you it can only play the explicit version after ten, that is not a preference or a brush-off. And when a station will not consider a record without a clean version, it is protecting a licence rather than being difficult.
For an artist the consequence is simple arithmetic. A clean edit makes your record eligible for the hours when people are actually listening. Without one you are competing for a slot in the overnight schedule, which at many college and community stations is automated.
At least 42 of the 273 confirmed accepting stations write a clean-edit or FCC requirement into their submission rules. The rule applies to almost every licensed station on the list regardless of whether it is published, because it comes from the licence and not from station policy.
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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Every term in the glossary → · The Playbook → · The data behind the numbers →