Radio X live

Radio X is a British rock and indie station operated by Global, broadcasting on FM in some areas, on DAB nationally, and online. Its format is guitar music with a male-skewed adult audience in mind — indie, Britpop, alternative and classic rock, with a presentation style that leans on personality and humour rather than continuous music. Its weekday output is built around named presenters, several of whom came from television and comedy. The station was created by rebranding an earlier alternative music service, and that lineage matters: it inherited a station that had carried new and independent music at a time when almost nothing else on commercial radio did. The rebrand shifted the balance towards established catalogue and personality-led daytime, which was commercially successful and disappointed some of the original audience. That tension — between playing new guitar music and playing the guitar music people already know — runs through British rock radio generally, and it is the reason several digital spin-offs exist alongside the main service, each resolving it differently. The live stream plays on this page, free and without registration.