Yes. Not one of the 1363 US stations we have read by hand posts a rule about where an artist lives. The real barrier is postage, and here is exactly where it falls.
Yes. The reason that answer is hard to find is that almost nobody writing about radio submission has read the stations' own rules.
Rotation has read the published submission pages of 1363 US radio stations by hand, across 44 states. Not one of them posts a rule about where an artist lives or what passport they hold. No residency clause, no US-only clause, no visa question, no American tax form, no requirement to belong to an American performing-rights society. Zero, out of 1363.
That is not a promise anyone will play you. It is the removal of a barrier most artists outside the United States assume is there, and it is worth knowing before you decide American radio is closed to you.
273 US stations have a submission door we have confirmed open right now. Of those:
The barrier is the envelope, not the passport.
Most stations here are noncommercial educational licensees. They sit in the reserved part of the FM band, 88.1 to 91.9, and federal rule bars them from broadcasting paid promotional announcements for for-profit companies. A station that cannot sell a spin has nothing to sell you.
That is why access to this part of radio has never had a price on it, for anybody, and why nationality was never going to be the thing standing between you and it. What decides whether a record gets played is a person, usually a student or a volunteer, deciding they like it enough to put it in front of an audience.
The exceptions are counted rather than waved at: 3 of the 273 are independent commercial stations and 15 broadcast without an FM signal, so neither group is bound by that rule.
| Station | Where | What it limits itself to |
|---|---|---|
| BFF | San Francisco, CA | Form. Bay Area counties only. Human-made music only - NO AI |
| KCTI | Gonzales, TX | Submit downloadable music links to [contact on your sheet]; local or regional Texas artists from Austin, San Antonio or surrounding communities with commercially available music; suggest 2 to 3 FCC-clean tracks, include contact info, your town and a brief bio. |
| KEDM | Monroe, LA | For information on how to submit local and regional music for airplay, send an email (not an attachment) to [contact on your sheet]; The Boot plays Louisiana artists and Southern regional acts, blues, funk, soul and zydeco. |
| KNTU | Denton, TX | Local artist submission form for HomeBrewed, weeknights at 9, they ask for DFW area artists, audio up to 50MB with WAV recommended, the form asks whether the lyrics are explicit |
| KTSN | Blowout, TX | Mail a finished CD of a full album or EP with artwork, plus contact details, the town you are from and a short bio; suggest 2 to 3 FCC-clean tracks; no MP3s, and submissions are not returned. Aimed at Texas artists from Austin, San Antonio and surrounding communities. |
| WERS | Boston, MA | Form: mp3 max 39MB + links. LOCAL Boston artists only; FCC-clean |
| WERW | Monroe, MI | The station runs a dedicated page for musicians, "Are You a Local Musician?", inviting original music onto Rewind 94.3 and asking artists to call or send an email to get started. No file format, genre, clean-edit or deadline rules are posted anywhere on the site. The invitation is scoped to Monroe County talent. The only radio-side contact published is the Radio Operations Manager, listed on the staff contact page rather than offered as a music inbox, so the route recorded here is the station's own mailing address addressed to that role, plus the office phone. |
| WEXT | Amsterdam, NY | Submissions must ONLY be made by the band/artist or a designated representative. Email a download link with band/artist name, album/song names, track listing, contact name and email, website and social media, where the artist is from and a short bio, subject line "Local 518 Show Submission". For an album or EP indicate up to 3 tracks for consideration. Preferred format is MP3 encoded at 320kbps or WAV; free transfer and cloud storage links are encouraged. Profanity is strongly discouraged: identify any song that is not FCC clean and supply either a cleaned version or the problem words with timestamps. Physical route: WEXT-FM, Attn: [name on your sheet] 518 Show, 4 Global View, Troy,. The Local 518 Show is for artists based in, or with strong ties to, the Capital District; the roots rock format of 97.7 WEXT-FM is generally a determining factor for airplay, but nearly all except extreme styles are considered. |
| WFAE | Charlotte, NC | Posts an artist submission form for its Amplifier music podcast, and the form asks for musicians from the Charlotte area. The newest episode listed on that page is dated December 2021, so treat it as possibly dormant. The 90.7 signal itself is NPR news and talk. |
| WOWL | Burnsville, MS | Plays two new local artist tracks per hour; send WAV or MP3, FCC safe for air with no cursing and no censored edit, plus a short intro explaining your connection to the Shoals. Local preference is the Alabama Shoals (Florence, Sheffield, Muscle Shoals, Tuscumbia), not Mississippi, even though the licence is Burnsville MS. |
| WXRV | Andover, MA | Homegrown Showcase form; declare radio-clean; REQUIRES signed no-AI certification |
| WZIP | Akron, OH | Ohio artists; submit through the LNLT artist form, questions to [contact on your sheet], physical copies to Attn Music Director |
Read what those restrictions actually say. WERS wants Boston artists. BFF wants Bay Area counties. KTCU wants the Dallas and Fort Worth area. Not one of them says anything about countries.
An artist in Texas is excluded from WERS by exactly the same rule you are. These are not stations that shut a door on foreigners; they are stations that opened one for their neighbours, and everyone else is outside it equally.
Four things change when you are sending from outside the United States, and only one of them is expensive.
Postage is the real constraint. 41 of the accepting stations want a disc. From Helsinki or Lagos or Manchester that is a meaningful cost per station, where for a US artist it is a stamp. This is the one place where being overseas costs you something real, and the answer is to work the 222 digital doors first and treat the envelope stations as a considered decision rather than a default.
Explicit lyrics are a legal question, not a taste one. US stations are bound by federal indecency rules during the day, and a station that airs the wrong record answers for it. If your record has swearing on it, make a clean edit before you send anything. This catches artists from countries with no equivalent rule completely off guard.
You cannot claim the local line. Community radio exists to serve a place, and saying you are from that place is the single easiest advantage on the list. It is not available to you. Do not fake it, and do not apologise for it either.
Time zones and currency do not matter at all. There is no payment, no account and no deadline in any of this. An email sent at 3am Helsinki time arrives in a Chicago inbox the same as any other.
1823 individual shows are mapped on the accepting stations, from the stations' own published schedules, with the night and hour each one airs. 142 of the accepting stations programme freeform, which means the show decides rather than a central playlist, and a freeform host is looking for something their listeners have not heard.
A record from outside the United States is, to a student programmer choosing between forty submissions, the interesting one. That is not a consolation prize. It is a genuine reason to open your email before the tenth local band's.
Lead with it. Say where you are from in the first line, name the show you want, and let the fact that you are not from around there do the work it is actually capable of doing.
None of this costs anything. The registry is free, the rules are free, and there is nothing to buy to send a record to a radio station.
Yes. Across 1363 US stations checked by hand, not one publishes a nationality or residency requirement. 273 have a door confirmed open right now and 222 of those take a file digitally with no geographic rule of any kind.
The ones that take independent submissions do, and they do not distinguish. The only geographic limits on this list are 12 stations that restrict to their own city or region, which excludes most American artists too.
No. Nothing in any station's posted rules requires it. What being outside the country actually costs you is postage on the 41 stations that want physical media, and the ability to say you are local.
Not to submit. No station in the registry asks for ASCAP, BMI or SESAC membership, a US distributor or an American label. Collecting royalties on airplay is a separate question with its own answer, and your own national society is the place to start on that.
41 of the accepting stations want physical media. They are real doors and some of them are among the best college stations in the country, so they are worth the postage on a shortlist rather than in bulk. Send digitally everywhere else first and see what comes back before spending money on envelopes.
Yes. Submitting to radio costs nothing anywhere on this list, and any service telling you it can guarantee American airplay for a fee is selling you something a station is not allowed to sell.
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. The other half shrinks far less than radio does when you are not in America. The Doors is 100 verified places that are not radio, and only 4 of them limit who may enter. 70 are open to you and finishable without leaving the country, 30 of those can pay an artist, and 19 more would take you but need you standing in America, which is a plane ticket rather than a rule. Every row says which it is, because eligible and reachable are not the same thing and no other list separates them. $9.99, the 2026 Q3 edition →
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