Over the years of traveling around the country for work, I've discovered that cities with excellent engineering colleges have the best radio stations. I don't know why, but they seem to go together because geeks are geeks, and if they are music/record/musical instrument geeks, and just happen to be working an a degree at a school where they have have a radio station to expand their inner geek, they go all out. That, and those stations get all the new independant releases, listen to them, and actually play them. Good luck getting your music played on a commercial radio station, unless they have a local music show at midnight on a Sunday.
My top choices are:
WMBR 88.1 FM from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
KZSC 88.1 form University of California Santa Cruz
WMSE 91.7 FM from Milwaukee School of Engineering
WRUR 88.5 FM from the University of Rochester
Honorable mention to KPIG 107.5 from Freedom, CA (They steal some of KZSC's DJs from time to time, and have awesome programming).
With the internet, it's nice to know that you don't have to suffer with commercial radio. Unfortunately, most people just get a Spotify, Pandora, or some other streaming account that gives them a narrow playlist of the two or three bands they "like", and then get no exposure to anything new. Bands linked to those services make nothing. It's about 100,000 streams per dollar paid. Absolutely insulting, but no one wants to pay for music, and thinks they should be able to download it for free.
There are so many great college and underground radio stations, there is no reason to listen to any corporate outlets. And with Bandcamp, the DJs will usually tell you if a band has a link so you can buy a cd or download any other stuff. The bands or their small indie labels get a greater percentage of the cash. Also, all college radio stations are linked to BMI and ASCAP. When they have their fundraisers as a community radio station, it's so they have money in the bank to pay the monthly royalty checks to the bands (and repair equipment). I have many friends in college radio, and know how well it is operated these days at most universities.
