FluxFM built its reputation on refusing to sound like mainstream German radio, so it says something that the station's most focused, single-decade format is the one built entirely around the 1980s. Der 80er Channel is one piece of a much larger operation, a Berlin station that has spent two decades proving alternative radio can also be commercially and critically successful.
From Motor FM to FluxFM
The station's roots go back to September 2004, when a project called Motor FM first went on air part-time on Berlin's event and DAB promotional frequency, according to the station's own history page. In February 2005, Motor FM won a proper UKW frequency at 106.8, though for its first five months on air it could only broadcast part-time because Radio Teddy held the remaining 15 hours of daily airtime on that license. Founders Mona Rübsamen and Markus Kühn kept building from there, and on 23 August 2011 the station rebranded as FluxFM, taking its new name from the Latin "fluxus," meaning flow, a fitting label for a station built around constant change rather than a fixed playlist formula.
An Award Cabinet Built on Not Sounding Like the Competition
FluxFM's bet on staying outside the mainstream has paid off in ways that are unusual for a self-described alternative station. It picked up the ECHO Music Prize in 2013 for supporting emerging artists, the Deutscher Radiopreis in both 2014 and 2018, and an international "Best Radio Station Worldwide" honor in 2014. Winning Germany's national radio prize twice while branding itself as the deliberate opposite of a hits-only format is a harder trick to pull off than the awards make it look.
Thirty Channels, One Built Entirely for the 80s
FluxFM's main broadcast on 100.6 FM is only the visible layer. Through its FluxMusic app the station runs roughly 30 themed channels covering everything from jazz and metal to hip-hop and decade-specific programming stretching from the 60s through the 2000s. Der 80er Channel is the busiest of those decade slots, built around synthpop, new wave, pop hits, acid house and 80s metal rather than a single narrow subgenre, giving it more range than a typical single-format oldies station.
More Than a Radio Signal
FluxFM has extended its brand well past the FM dial. The station runs FluxBau, an event and concert venue in Kreuzberg, alongside side projects like a cycling team and a sailing school, evidence of a station that has treated its identity as a lifestyle brand rather than just a programming schedule. That same willingness to build things beyond a single format is visible in the 30-channel FluxMusic app, where a station known for defying the mainstream has quietly built one of the more thorough decade-by-decade archives in German radio.
A Focused Detour From an Unfocused Mission
Der 80er Channel is, in a sense, the odd one out for a station whose whole identity is built on not following formulas. But committing an entire channel to one decade's synthpop, new wave and rock is its own kind of curatorial statement, proof that FluxFM's alternative instincts extend even to how it handles nostalgia.