ONE FM plays classic and adult hits from the 80s to the early 2000s for Singapore's forward-thinking professionals, but its roots trace back to something far less commercial: a labour union's attempt to run a radio station with a "social purpose" rather than a profit motive.
Born as Radio Heart, Run by a Union
The National Trades Union Congress began planning Singapore's first private "wireless" radio stations back in April 1990, launching what it called NTUC Radio, later renamed Radio Heart, on 91.3 MHz in English (and 100.3 MHz in Mandarin) in early 1991 (Wikipedia). Being non-profit-driven by design, the station was explicitly built to serve a social purpose alongside entertainment, a genuinely unusual origin story for what is now a mainstream commercial hits station.
Heart 91.3 began broadcasting 24 hours a day on 1 May 1994, and its overnight hosts became a defining feature, drawing calls from students at 2am looking to unwind after a night of studying. The station would go through several more identities, including WKRZ, Radio 91.3, and HOT FM 91.3, before its January 2015 rebrand as ONE FM 91.3 under the slogan "Real Music."
Good Times and the Greatest Hits, 80s to Now
Since a late-2017 format shift, ONE FM has settled into its current identity as a Classic Hits and Adult Hits station, playing rock, pop, and adult contemporary staples from the 1980s through the early 2000s (Singapore Wiki). The playlist leans hard into arena-rock royalty, think Bon Jovi, Queen, Guns N' Roses, and Led Zeppelin, alongside adult contemporary names like Lenny Kravitz, giving the station a sound aimed squarely at listeners who grew up on those records the first time around.
- Classic rock staples, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Aerosmith and U2 in heavy rotation alongside the era's biggest arena acts.
- Adult contemporary crossovers, softer names like k.d. lang and S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. rounding out the daytime mix.
- A target built around nostalgia, forward-thinking professionals aged 40 and up, a demographic the station targets deliberately rather than chasing younger listeners.
Singapore's Crowded Radio Dial
ONE FM operates in one of the world's more competitive small radio markets. It now sits under SPH Media, which also runs Money FM 89.3, Kiss92, and UFM100.3, and competes directly for the classic-hits and adult-contemporary audience against Mediacorp's Gold 905 and Class95 (ONE FM). That competitive pressure is part of why the station's late-2017 pivot away from a broader CHR and rock format mattered, carving out a clearer lane in a market where several stations chase overlapping demographics on the same handful of frequencies.
The Morning Drive and a Straits Times Newsroom
Weekday mornings belong to The Morning Drive, currently hosted by The Flying Dutchman and Lavinia Tan, running 6 to 10am and mixing music with sports and lifestyle news (ONE FM). The rest of the weekday lineup runs through Shan Wee's Music Mansion, Philip Chew's Sweet Escape, Carol Smith's evening drive-time Escapade, and Simon Lim overnight, each with its own on-air identity built around personality as much as playlist.
Since late August 2024, hourly headline news has shifted to dedicated newsreaders from the SPH Media newsroom rather than the on-air DJs themselves, with sports and news bulletins sourced directly from The Straits Times (Singapore Wiki). It's a small structural detail, but it reflects how tightly the station is woven into SPH's broader newsroom operation rather than running as a standalone music service.
Why It's Worth Your Time
Most classic hits stations lean on nostalgia alone. ONE FM backs that nostalgia with an origin story most listeners never hear about, a union-run social experiment that spent three decades mutating into one of Singapore's sharpest-targeted commercial formats. If you grew up on Bon Jovi and Queen and want a station built specifically for that memory rather than chasing whatever's trending, this is the one.
Stream ONE FM Free on Radio Shuffle
Tune in to ONE FM on Radio Shuffle, no account, no app, no fee. Press play and you're straight into an arena-rock chorus from a station that's been finding its exact sound for over three decades.