Hit Radio streams hits and new Moroccan music free on Radio Shuffle, broadcasting out of Morocco as the country's first station built specifically for a young audience. It plays current pop and the homegrown Moroccan music scene side by side, and it got there only after its founder spent thirteen years waiting for the government to say yes.
Thirteen Years Between the Idea and the License
Younès Boumehdi first applied to Morocco's Ministry of the Interior to launch a private radio station in 1993, but the country's broadcasting law did not open the door to private stations until a 2003 reform, according to coverage of the station's history. The license finally came through in 2006, with the formal agreement signed between Boumehdi and Morocco's Conseil Supérieur de la Communication Audiovisuelle on May 17 of that year. Hit Radio made its first broadcast from Rabat on July 1, 2006, and expanded to seven frequencies across Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakech within its first eighteen months on air.
Built for 16 to 25-Year-Olds, and Only Them
Hit Radio launched as the first Moroccan station openly positioned around a single target audience, listeners between 16 and 25, rather than trying to appeal to everyone at once. That focus shaped everything about its programming, which gave real airtime to Morocco's emerging music scene rather than only imported pop, and pushed boundaries that state and older private broadcasters had generally avoided.
First to Broadcast News in Darija
The station holds a specific media milestone in Morocco: it was the first radio station in the country to air news bulletins in Darija, the Moroccan Arabic dialect spoken in daily life rather than the formal Arabic typically used in official broadcasting. Pairing that with Morocco's first open phone-in call show gave Hit Radio a reputation for speaking to its audience in the language and tone they actually used, not the more formal register older stations defaulted to.
From One Moroccan City to Ten African Countries
Hit Radio's reach grew well beyond its original Rabat-Casablanca-Marrakech triangle. In 2012, Boumehdi partnered with Gameli Kodjoaku to launch Média Holding, a company based in Lomé, Togo built specifically to carry the Hit Radio brand across the rest of the African continent. By 2015 the station was broadcasting in ten African countries, with Côte d'Ivoire later joining as one of the newest markets to grant it frequencies, turning a station built to serve Moroccan teenagers into a continental youth radio brand.
Listen to Hit Radio Free on Radio Shuffle
Tune in to Hit Radio on Radio Shuffle, no account, no app, no fee. Press play and hear the station that waited thirteen years for a license and then became the voice of young Morocco.