The method
Every station here was opened by a person, read off its own published page, and given an honest status. Hundreds more were rejected. This is exactly how, so you can check us.
Station counts on this page are read from the registry itself when the page loads, so they cannot fall out of date. The rejected total is checked against the exclusion record every time the site is built.
Station lists circulate the internet endlessly and most of them are copies of each other, which is how a dead address survives for years. We start from the FCC's own record of licensed non-commercial educational stations, so the starting set is every station that legally exists rather than every station somebody remembered.
Not a directory, not an aggregator, not a cached copy. The station's own pages: the contact page, the staff page, the submissions page if there is one, the schedule. What that station says about taking music is the only thing that counts, and it is quoted rather than paraphrased.
The specific address, form or postal route the station itself puts forward for music. Not a general enquiries line we hope somebody reads. If a station publishes rules alongside it, those rules are recorded in the station's own words, including the awkward ones: clean edits only, no links, physical media only, contact the show and not the building.
Four of them, defined below. Two of the four mean we could not confirm a station takes music, and those stations are published anyway, because knowing where not to send is worth almost as much as knowing where to send.
Doors move. Music directors graduate, stations rebuild their sites, submission forms are retired. Every page on this site carries the month it was last rechecked, so you are never guessing how old the information is.
Verified open
The station says it takes submissions, or publishes an address or form specifically for music. 273 stations are here. A star is added only when there is a dedicated submission page or form, which 74 stations have. A star is never given for an email address, however good it is.
Likely accepting
A real music-programming station that publishes a usable route on its own domain, but has never explicitly written down that it takes submissions. 511 stations are here. It is an honest label rather than a hedge: send with care and read the rules first.
Research
We found the station, not the door. 569 stations are here, and they are published on purpose. A row that says plainly "there is no route to find" saves you the hour you would have spent looking for one.
Closed
The station states it does not accept unsolicited submissions. 10 say so on their own pages, and we print it, because being told no in advance costs nothing and being ignored costs a week of wondering.
813 stations have been checked and left out. Almost all of them broadcast, some of them are well known, and none of them belongs on a list for independent artists. The tell is nearly always the same: one feed, many transmitters, one shared address.
| Reason | Stations |
|---|---|
| Repeater or simulcast of another station | 124 |
| Regional or national religious network on one feed | 67 |
| American Family Radio | 44 |
| K-LOVE and Air1 | 42 |
| News, talk or automated classical with no music submissions | 30 |
| Bible Broadcasting Network | 13 |
| Reading service for the blind | 1 |
| Other, each recorded with its own reason | 56 |
This is the part a scraped list cannot do. A network repeater has a call sign, a frequency, a city and often a contact form, so it looks exactly like a station to a script. It is a transmitter for a signal originating a thousand miles away, and nobody there will ever hear your record.
Rules that do not bend
Rotation is an independent company in Atlanta, founded by DeShawn Marks. The registry is not automated, not licensed from anybody, and not bought. It was built station by station and it is maintained the same way.
If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed. That includes stations: if you programme one of these signals and your row is out of date, or you would rather not be listed at all, write to deshawn@getinrotation.com and it is changed the same day, no argument.
The verification is the product. Everything else on this site, the search, the rules, the shows, the national programmes, is downstream of somebody having opened the page and read it.