Irish radio stations accepting music submissions

Ireland is a small radio market with an unusually accessible bottom half. There is no statutory quota obliging anyone to play Irish music, so nothing is handed to a new act by regulation, but there are roughly twenty licensed community stations, a cluster of student stations, and a couple of online broadcasters with real national reach, all of which are programmed by people who choose their own records. Here is the Irish landscape door by door, drawn from the Irish stations in the directory.

Community radio is the sector that says yes

Ireland's community stations are licensed by Coimisiún na Meán, which took over broadcasting regulation when the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland was dissolved in 2023, and they are represented and supported by Craol, the Community Radio Forum of Ireland. Alongside 33 commercial services, there are around 21 community, community-of-interest and special-interest services on air.

The directory carries a large slice of them: Phoenix FM in Dublin 15, Dublin City FM, Dublin South FM, Near FM in the north-east of the city, Liffey Sound FM in Lucan, Together FM, Athlone Community Radio, Connemara Community Radio broadcasting out of Letterfrack, Dundalk FM and CRY 104FM in Youghal.

These are volunteer stations with specialist shows, and the show is the unit you pitch. A country show, a metal show and a singer-songwriter show at the same station are three different people making three different decisions, and the presenter of the one that fits you will very often reply personally. That is the whole advantage of a small market: the person who decides is the person reading the email.

Student stations

Irish universities punch above their weight here. UCC 98.3FM in Cork, Flirt FM in Galway, Trinity FM and Belfield FM in Dublin all run student-programmed schedules with a strong bias toward new and local music. They fill a lot of airtime with a small team, they are not defending a commercial format, and they say yes quickly. They are also where a surprising number of Irish music journalists, promoters and radio producers started, so the relationships outlive the shows.

Online stations with national reach

Two names matter disproportionately. 8Radio.com is a Dublin-based station built by radio people around eclectic, guitar-heavy, presenter-led programming that sounds nothing like commercial Irish radio, and it has periodically held temporary FM licences alongside its stream. Dublin Digital Radio is a community-supported online station with a schedule of resident shows covering electronic, experimental and left-field music, and it functions as much as a scene hub as a broadcaster.

Because both are online, geography stops mattering. A band in Sligo, or an Irish diaspora act in London or Boston, can be in rotation on a Dublin station without setting foot in Dublin.

Irish-language radio is a real door

Raidió na Life in Dublin is the Irish-language community station for the capital, and it programs a lot of new music alongside its Irish-language remit. If you have any Irish-language material, or a bilingual release, this is a genuinely underused route, because the pool of artists competing for those slots is much smaller than the pool competing for a spot on a mainstream playlist. It is worth saying clearly: you do not need fluent Irish to have your instrumental or bilingual work considered, but do write the pitch respectfully and acknowledge the station's remit.

RTÉ 2FM, local commercial radio, and what is realistic

RTÉ 2FM is the national youth station and the biggest prize on this list. Its main new-artist vehicle is 2FM Rising, which has run since 2018 as an artist development project: each year a panel of industry people picks a list of emerging Irish acts who receive dedicated airplay, promotional support, performance opportunities and a 1,000 euro bursary from IMRO. Past selections include Fontaines D.C., Dermot Kennedy and Denise Chaila.

The important detail is that 2FM Rising is not an open call you enter. It is a selection made by people watching the scene, which means the way in is indirect: get played on community and online stations, get written about, play the right rooms, and be visible to the panel before the panel goes looking. Specialist evening shows on 2FM are more reachable than daytime, and the same is true across Irish local commercial radio, where a local-music show hosted by an enthusiast is a real target and the daytime playlist is not.

The absence of a quota is the honest backdrop to all of this. A quota for Irish music on radio was ruled out by the responsible minister in 2020, so no station is obliged to play you. Every Irish spin you get is somebody's choice, which makes the relationship the whole game.

Every Irish listing in the directory carries a contact I have checked by hand, with the genres it plays, the town it broadcasts from and a working email or submission form. 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 Irish station

Small market, so behave like it. Name the show and the presenter, keep the email to five or six lines, and say where you are from and where you are playing next. Irish community and student presenters respond to a local hook more reliably than to a press quote, and gigs are the strongest hook there is: a Cork show gets you a Cork listen.

Send a private stream link and a downloadable, properly tagged file, with the release date and ISRC in the body of the mail. Offer a session or a phone interview, because these stations have hours to fill and would rather talk to you than just play the track. Follow up once, then leave it. The Irish scene is small enough that a reputation for being easy to work with travels, and so does the other kind.

Breaking Tunes and getting paid

Two pieces of housekeeping worth doing before you start. First, put a profile on Breaking Tunes, the discovery portal run by First Music Contact, which hosts well over sixteen thousand acts from the island of Ireland and is where a lot of Irish industry people, radio included, go to look someone up. It is free and it is the closest thing Ireland has to a national artist database.

Second, register to collect. IMRO handles the songwriting and publishing side and pays performing royalties when a station plays your song. RAAP collects for performers whose recorded performances are broadcast, with reciprocal agreements in more than fifty countries. PPI is the collecting body on the record company side. If you write and perform and release your own records, you are looking at all three, and none of it happens retroactively for people who never signed up.

Start where the door is open

Ireland does not legislate airplay for its own artists, so it earns it one presenter at a time. The good news is that there are more presenters here who can just decide to play you than in almost any market this size. Start with the verified Irish stations, pick the shows that actually fit, and write like a person. Membership is $39 a year and opens up the contacts behind all 1,900+ verified radio listings, in Ireland and everywhere else.