Indian radio stations accepting music submissions

India has more than a billion potential listeners and a commercial FM sector that is, for an independent artist, close to a closed shop. That sounds bleak and it is only half the story. The doors that do open in India are community radio, now more than 500 licensed stations strong, and a small but serious independent online sector. Those two worlds are exactly where the 12 verified Indian stations in my directory come from.

Be honest about commercial FM

Private FM radio in India is a film music business. The playlists on the big national networks are built around Bollywood and the regional film industries, Tollywood, Kollywood and the rest, because that is what the largest audience wants and what advertisers pay for. Some stations carry international pop and rock, and there are occasional specialist or late night slots where independent music gets a hearing, but the daytime playlist of a major FM network is not a realistic target for an unsigned artist without a film placement or a label pushing hard behind the record.

All India Radio, the public broadcaster, is a different structure again. It works through its own audition and grading processes rather than an open submissions inbox, so it is a longer, more formal route rather than something you pitch cold on a release week.

I would like to tell you otherwise, but none of that means Indian radio is shut. It means the open part of Indian radio is somewhere else, and that is where I would spend your pitching hours.

Community radio is where the door is

India's community radio system runs under policy guidelines from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and it has grown steadily for two decades. The 500th station, Apna Radio 90.0 FM at IIMC Aizawl, was inaugurated in 2024, and the count has kept climbing since, with the government running a dedicated scheme to support the sector. Licences go to educational institutions, NGOs and agricultural science centres rather than to broadcast companies, and each station serves a defined local community, usually in the local language.

That shapes what gets played, and it is worth understanding before you pitch. Folk and regional language music is the backbone, alongside development, education and local culture programming. Radio Bundelkhand 90.4 broadcasts from Orchha in Madhya Pradesh, Alfaz-e-Mewat (Radio Connect 107.8) from Nuh in Haryana, Radio Namaskar 90.4 from Konark in Odisha, Radio Mattoli 90.4 from Mananthavady in Kerala, Henvalvani Community Radio 90.4 from Chamba in Uttarakhand, and Gurgaon Ki Awaaz 107.8 from Gurugram. A station like that is not going to play your English language indie rock, and I would not waste your afternoon or theirs pitching it. If your music sits anywhere near folk, regional language, devotional or acoustic traditions, it is a very real door.

The campus side of the sector is more genre flexible. Puduvai Vaani FM 107.8 runs out of Pondicherry University, Radio JU from Jadavpur University in Kolkata, M.O.P. Community Radio from Chennai, and Radio Active CR 90.4 MHz from Bangalore. Student and volunteer produced shows there are much more open to contemporary independent music.

The independent online tier, starting with boxout.fm

boxout.fm is the one to know. It launched in New Delhi in 2016 as an independent online station and has grown into a whole ecosystem: a deep archive of resident shows, an in house label in boxout.fm Recordings, and its own events including Boxout Wednesdays. It is genuinely focused on independent music across electronic, alternative and everything adjacent, and it works as a community of hosts rather than a playlist committee, which means the music is judged on the music. If you make anything left of the mainstream in India, this is the platform to build a relationship with.

The same logic applies to the smaller online projects in the directory: they are curated by people, and people answer email. Check the site is still active before you pitch, since several of the lockdown-era stations have gone quiet.

Every Indian listing in the directory carries a contact I have checked by hand, with a working contact and the genres each station plays, so you can tell at a glance which stations fit your record. Submission policies vary from station to station, so where one publishes a stance I show it on that station's own page.

How to pitch an Indian station

Email in English is fine for the university hosted and online stations. For rural community stations the working language is local and the person reading your message may be a volunteer with a full time job elsewhere, so keep it short, plain and specific. Name the show if the station publishes a schedule, say where you are from, and be direct about the genre and the language you sing in.

Send a private stream link and a downloadable, properly tagged file rather than an attachment, and offer more than the track: an interview, a session, or the story behind the recording. Community stations are hungry for programming and a person with something to say is often more useful to them than another three minute song. Do not be thrown if a conversation moves to WhatsApp either, that is ordinary working practice in Indian media rather than a sign of a station that is not serious.

Getting paid for Indian airplay

Two separate rights generate money when your music is broadcast in India. IPRS is the society for authors, composers and publishers on the musical work, and Indian courts have confirmed that authors and composers are owed royalties when FM stations broadcast their works. On the sound recording side, PPL India, RMPL and Novex administer rights for the recording itself. If you are an Indian songwriter, joining IPRS is the baseline step. If you are outside India, your own society's reciprocal arrangement with IPRS is what collects for you, so keep your registrations, writer splits and ISRCs accurate.

The realistic plan

Stop pitching the stations that were never going to say yes, and spend the same hour on the ones built to say yes. Community radio, campus stations and independent online platforms are where Indian independent music actually gets aired, and they are reachable by one honest email. Start with the verified Indian stations, match the station to the music properly, and pitch a handful of them well. Membership is $39 a year and opens the emails and submission forms behind every listing, plus the rest of the 1,900+ verified radio contacts in the directory.