Before Life FM was a radio station, Paul Roast was already a fixture of London's jungle scene, running one of the raves that helped define it. The station he built in the late nineties carries that scene's DJs, not just its sound.
Founded by a Rave Promoter, Not a Broadcaster
Life FM was created by Paul Roast in the late 1990s as an online station broadcasting out of London, according to a directory listing of UK internet radio stations. Roast wasn't new to the scene when he started it. He was one of the original founders of the jungle rave night Sunday Roast, part of a run of London club nights and events he has kept running from the 1980s through to today, a background that put him inside the jungle and drum and bass world as a promoter years before he had a station of his own.
A Roster Pulled From the Same Scene
That rave background shows up directly in who ends up behind the mic. The station's lineup has included DJ Lioness, alongside other names drawn from London's underground dance circuit, artists who came up through the same club and rave network Roast had already spent years building before Life FM existed. It is less a station that hired DJs and more a scene that gave itself a signal.
DJs Pay to Play, and the Camera Stays On
Life FM runs on an unusual funding model: DJs pay a subscription for their own two-hour sets, which go out live alongside webcam footage of the booth itself, according to the station's own crowdfunding campaign. That arrangement flips the usual radio relationship, DJs are effectively paying for a stage rather than being paid to fill airtime, and it has kept the station broadcasting continuously for what the crowdfunding campaign describes as 16 years and counting.
Dub, Reggae, Jungle, and Whatever Else Fits
The current lineup spans dub, reggae, house, garage, rock, indie, jungle, and drum and bass, a genre spread wide enough that it resists a single label, which tracks with a station built around whichever DJs from the scene want a slot rather than a programmed format designed around one sound. The station has also marked scene milestones directly, running a 25 Years of Jungle Mania event that ties its programming back to the genre's own anniversary rather than treating jungle as just one tag among many.
Now Streaming Everywhere the Scene Already Lives
Life FM broadcasts across Mixcloud, Radio Garden, Twitch, YouTube, and even an Amazon Alexa skill, spreading a station built on London club culture across every platform where that same audience already spends time online. It has also launched Life for Music, a digital record label extension that pushes the station past pure broadcasting into releasing the scene's music directly.
Life FM never stopped being a rave promoter's project, it just added a transmitter. Paul Roast built Sunday Roast to give jungle a room, and decades later, Life FM is the version that never has to close for the night.