Dutch radio has a history unlike anywhere else in Europe, and it explains a lot about how the stations here sound. In the 1960s, offshore pirates broadcasting from ships outside territorial waters, Radio Veronica chief among them, built mass audiences the licensed system was not serving. When the law caught up, several of those stations came ashore and became legitimate broadcasters, carrying their sensibility with them.
The result is a commercial radio culture that is unusually music-led and unusually good at classic rock and pop formats. Dutch stations also programme a substantial amount of Nederpop, Dutch-language material, alongside the international canon.
The Netherlands is also one of the birthplaces of modern dance music, with Dutch producers central to trance and later to festival EDM. Dutch dance stations are close to the source.
