Latest Articles
How Radio Ratings Work: Rajar, Nielsen, and How Stations Measure Their Audience
Radio stations, like all media, need to know how many people are listening and who they are. Without audience measurement, advertisers cannot place media buys, broadcasters cannot evaluate…
DAB Digital Radio: How Britain Reinvented the Radio Set
DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is a digital radio standard developed in Europe in the 1980s and deployed at scale in the UK, Germany, Norway, and other countries as…
Radio Luxembourg: The Pirate That Launched a Thousand Careers
Radio Luxembourg was one of the most important radio stations in European history — a commercial broadcaster transmitting from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg that could reach Britain,…
Progressive Rock Radio: Long Songs, Complex Structures, and the Art of the Album Side
Progressive rock — prog rock — is the genre that dared to ask whether rock music could be as ambitious as classical composition. In the late 1960s and…
Bhangra Radio: The Sound of the Punjab on the Global Dial
Bhangra originated as a harvest festival folk dance from the Punjab region of northwestern India and Pakistan. Through the South Asian diaspora in the UK, Canada, and the…
Celtic Music Radio: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Folk Tradition on the Airwaves
Celtic music radio serves one of the world’s most passionately maintained folk traditions — the music of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and the Celtic diaspora communities of North…
Afrobeats Radio: The African Sound Taking Over Global Playlists
Afrobeats (not to be confused with Afrobeat, the political genre created by Fela Kuti) is a loose umbrella term for the contemporary popular music of West Africa —…
Lo-Fi Hip Hop Radio: How a YouTube Stream Became a Genre
Lo-fi hip hop is one of the most unusual radio success stories of the streaming era: a music genre that went from niche internet subculture to one of…
Drum and Bass Radio: The UK’s Underground Sound That Conquered the World
Drum and bass is a genre born in London in the early 1990s — fast breakbeats (typically 160-180 BPM), heavy sub-bass, and a dark, futuristic atmosphere drawn from…
Voice of America: The Station That Broadcast America to the World
Voice of America (VOA) is the United States’ international public broadcaster — a radio, television and digital service that broadcasts in 48 languages to an estimated weekly audience…
BBC Radio 4: The Station That Proves Talk Radio Can Be Extraordinary
BBC Radio 4 is the most listened-to radio station in the United Kingdom that does not play music. It broadcasts news, drama, comedy, documentaries, panel games, serialised books,…
Radio Formats Explained: A Complete Guide to Every Type of Station
Over the past several years, this site has built a comprehensive library of guides to every radio format you might encounter on the dial or online. This page…