BBC Radio 6 Music live

BBC Radio 6 Music is the BBC’s alternative music network. It launched in 2002 as a digital-only service and has never broadcast on FM or AM, reaching its audience through DAB, digital television and the internet. Its territory is the music that sits outside the chart: independent and alternative rock, electronic music, soul and funk reissues, and new releases from labels that commercial radio does not playlist. The station draws heavily on the BBC’s archive of live sessions, which stretches back through decades of recordings made specifically for radio rather than lifted from albums. 6 Music has an unusual history for a radio station: in 2010 the BBC proposed closing it, and the public response — a campaign by listeners and musicians that ran for months — reversed the decision. It has since grown well beyond its audience at the time, and is now cited as evidence that a station can be both specialist and popular. The presenting line-up leans on musicians and long-standing broadcasters with deep catalogues of their own, and the tone assumes a listener who wants to be shown something rather than reassured with the familiar.