Is Pirate Radio Still A Thing In 2023?

Wouldn't it be amazing if all the licensed radio stations weren't owned by like three companies?

There is a station here that many people think is a pirate. Near the end of the year it suddenly begins transmitting and plays random things like classic radio shows from the 1940s. That certainly sounds like pirate radio content but it's actually a licensed AM radio station that the owner has decided isn't worth operating full time yet it needs to transmit for a certain number of hours during the year to avoid losing its license.

I was a DJ on a pirate back in the late 70’s early 80’s… absolutely loved it.

Kurupt FM will never die !! Keeping it real. 😊

The luxury pirates have today is how they link from the studio to the transmitter. In the good old days, it was done with band 4 and band 1 links, and also microwave links, which was even better. Now you just use a dongle with a 3G card with a raspberry pi and stream the audio to this via the internet and there's your link. The great thing about this is that you can have transmitters anywhere and everywhere in the world as opposed to being in range of your studio.

There was an FM pirate operating in Chicago for about the past 10 years; shut down by the FCC in spring of 2022. I haven't heard any pirates since.

I can't believe that some pirate stations are on the air since more than 10 years and have not been taken down.

I would have loved a drum & bass station back when I was in college. I still wouldn't mind it now, 25 years later.

I always wanted a pirate station. The movie "Pump Up The Volume" still holds water to this day!

It's interesting that there are so many dance stations, and they're all using RDS. In New York City, the pirates are mostly ethnic, many are only on the air during evenings and weekends, and very few, if any, are transmitting RDS.

Myself and a friend visited London in 2009 and I brought an FM receiver and recorder with me. From a friend's flat in central London we heard Force 106.5, Innacity 102.5 and Supreme dance 96.1. I heard many other stations, but those are the three I have recordings of. I noted there were more pirates on the air than commercial stations.

Apparently the London pirates are venturing into DAB. With multiple pirate studio feeds on the mux.

Fascinating, I never thought there would still be pirate radio. I fancied myself as a pirate radio DJ and I used ro play music through a single walkie-talkie. That was when I was like 12.

Great video, and long may Underground Bass keep the spirit of the original Kool alive!

UNDERGROUND BASS IS ALIVE AND KICKING ❤ FRESH STATION WITH SOME OF THE MOST TALENTED MCS DJS, #EAZYLIFE

I love how many of them are DnB! And I’m also not surprised 😅

Apparently Ireland has such lax and patchy regulation that pirates there have been broadcasting on DAB. I also personally believe they should have an amnesty for some of these stations. Most of them are perfectly harmless (at least in terms of the content) and the local community enjoy them.

Wow, I'm shocked there are so many of these in London! Here in Houston, I can only recall ever encountering 2 pirate radio stations myself. One was a very short-lived station on 87.7 which aired a far-right/conspiracy-laiden talk radio format featuring Alex Jones. I don't think it was ever reported who was behind this. The other was "Joe FM" on 87.9, which aired a classic hits format. This station was run by a man named Joe Donalson and had a ridiculously long, convoluted, and disputed backstory. See the KJIB-LP Wikipedia article, which refers to a TV station that was long-since silent by the time "Joe FM" began in the 2010s, yet was used by Joe in various ways to claim legitimacy of his station. He also ran a pirate analog TV station that claimed to be a legitimate broadcast of the similarly-silent station KVDO-LP in the 2010s. Joe is still around in the world of Houston radio. Estrella Media owns the AM radio station KEYH, which went silent in 2020 after the company lost their lease on the tower site. Joe stepped in, with Estrella's permission (presumably in an attempt to keep the license alive without having to do anything), and set up a rinkydink 100W AM transmitter and a longwire antenna which broadcasts a classic hits format on 850 AM. It's a very poor setup with terrible range, yet the FCC has granted Special Temporary Authority for it, as well as multiple extensions, so it seems to be legal.

We have a couple of unused channels on the FM broadcast band in my town, most notably 88.5. As you drive through town you may hear upwards of a dozen low (micro) power stations giving it their all. I do analog stereo, digital and radio data (artist and song) and cover a few residential blocks. I play about everything you can think of but try to keep it in genre time blocks. No hardware, only open source software and a HackRF-One box.

I was a lookout on Radio Jackie 227 metres MW/AM back in 1974 when I was 14. The big regular stations were Radio Jackie 227m, Radio Kaleidoscope 266m MW AM. There was the LTIR (London Transmitter of Independent Radio) 94.4 mHz VHF FM in London but from my home in Medway Kent I could never pick up these transmissions. The LTIR carried various stations including Jackie, Kaleidoscope, Aquarius and others.. The 1970's was the golden era for Land Based Pop Pirates. Shortwave was quite busy on Sunday mornings in the 49 metre band with various stations..