Sounds of Your Life: The History of Independent Radio in the UK

This telling of the history of the experiment of independent radio in the United Kingdom (UK) describes how independent radio came about in the mid-1970s, its existence for the 2 decades that followed, and its replacement by commercial radio around the end of the century. It is a political and administrative history, as well as a media reference book. According to its author, it is written to illustrate the wider changes across the whole of society which accompanied the UK's shift from a social to a market economy.

The book is in three main sections that follow an introduction reviewing the 50 years before the arrival of this alternative radio service in the UK. The first section covers the design and implementation of Independent Local Radio (ILR) in the Seventies, including the political debates and the efforts of the pioneer radio companies to launch a brand new medium. The second describes how ILR fared in the Eighties, as the independent approach became established, and the shift in aspiration towards a more market-based model. The third relates the developments of the Nineties, including the arrival of Independent National Radio, controversy over licence awards, and the breaking of the mould of independent radio as it was replaced by commercial radio. Within these sections, there are specialist chapters on audience research, community radio, music copyright, and digital radio. A postscript traces the final laying down of the aspirations of independent, public service radio in the modern era of commercial radio.