FREIRAD: live radio from Innsbruck

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FREIRAD

The pirates who beat the monopoly.

Tyrol's free radio: 1960s garage, jazz, Balkan, Turkish.

FREIRAD started as illegal transmissions in 1980s Tyrol, aimed squarely at ORF's exclusive hold on Austrian broadcasting, and then spent most of the 1990s in court arguing for a licence it eventually won. It has been on air full time since July 2002, on three frequencies reaching from Zirl to Schwaz, and it remains the only free radio the province has ever had. It takes no advertising and asks nothing of newcomers beforehand: sit a workshop, and the slot is yours for as long as you want it.

Over 400 volunteers fill more than a hundred shows, and the range is the point — Innsbruck city-council sessions and Democracy Now! relays sit beside Back from the Grave digging through 1960s psych, All That Jazz, and community hours in Turkish, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian and Caribbean Spanish. A standing call asks Tyrolean musicians to send their own records in.

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Innsbruck, Austria

FREIRAD

The pirates who beat the monopoly.

Tyrol's free radio: 1960s garage, jazz, Balkan, Turkish.

FREIRAD started as illegal transmissions in 1980s Tyrol, aimed squarely at ORF's exclusive hold on Austrian broadcasting, and then spent most of the 1990s in court arguing for a licence it eventually won. It has been on air full time since July 2002, on three frequencies reaching from Zirl to Schwaz, and it remains the only free radio the province has ever had. It takes no advertising and asks nothing of newcomers beforehand: sit a workshop, and the slot is yours for as long as you want it.

Over 400 volunteers fill more than a hundred shows, and the range is the point — Innsbruck city-council sessions and Democracy Now! relays sit beside Back from the Grave digging through 1960s psych, All That Jazz, and community hours in Turkish, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian and Caribbean Spanish. A standing call asks Tyrolean musicians to send their own records in.