While we are happy to hear from those in the music industry, Radio Caroline – and every other radio station in world – gets 100s of (often unsolicited) emails a week asking for airplay, many of which fall outside of our format and thus waste our time, and that of the sender. This is an attempt to give an idea of what the station is looking for and not looking for.

1. Any submission should fit our format of adult rock or rock-like music (see a longer description below). We do not play blatant commercial "pop", dance, rap/hop-hop, death-metal or anything so left-field that most of our audience would turn off.
2. Radio Caroline runs an album format, so the track should be from an album or at the very least an EP/mini-album. Not a single with no album on the horizon.
3. The track must be very recent i.e. within the last couple of weeks at the most, or a pre-release. It cannot be many weeks or months old as it has to be announced on air as being ‘new' and if chosen as a Featured Track is on rotation for 6 weeks. So the fresher it goes on the less stale it will be when it comes off.

OK then – what is our format?

Trying to describe Radio Caroline's format in a few words is something we've always struggled with.

On the one hand it is easy to call ourselves a 'rock station', but we are more than that. Our programming is orientated towards an adult audience who have had decades to absorb the best of what they have heard on this radio station and others, and consequently enjoy a broad range of styles.

Yes, we do play 'rock' – in many of its flavours, but also blues, folk, singer-songwriter, some soul, some country – and some that can't easily be categorised.

We can also be classed by what we don't play – that is music well covered on almost every other radio station: i.e. manufactured commercial pop, dance and rap/hop-hop, most of which appeals to those below the age threshold we are programming for. We also avoid very heavy metal, thrash, death-metal etc.