Glossary · The people and the places
Specialty show
A specialty show is a programme dedicated to one kind of music inside a station's wider schedule: a hip-hop show, a metal show, a jazz show, a local music hour. The host usually chooses the records personally, which makes the show, not the station, the thing that decides.
This is the single most useful idea in independent radio submissions and the one most often missed. Artists research stations, match by genre and send to the station. But at a large share of these stations there is no station-level taste to match: there are twenty programmes with twenty hosts, and your record is right for one of them.
Every station publishes its schedule, so the information is public. Finding the show that plays your sound, learning the host's name and writing to that show specifically is more effective than any amount of polish on a generic submission.
Of the 273 stations confirmed accepting submissions, 9 route music to a specific show, host, DJ or genre director rather than to a central music director. Rotation has mapped 3929 shows across 296 stations so far, 2100 of them with a host named by the station itself.
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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