About Radio Mixtape

Radio Mixtape

Radio Mixtape is a private radio station based in Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, on air since 29 October 2025 at 10 am. A joint project of RADIO NRW and the NRW local radio stations, it replaced the discontinued station Noxx on the statewide DAB+ multiplex. With the slogan "Der Soundtrack deines Lebens", it targets the Best Ager generation with music from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, presented by familiar voices from the early days of NRW local radio. It broadcasts on DAB+ channel 9D in the audio.digital NRW multiplex across North Rhine-Westphalia and neighbouring areas, as a web stream and via the Radio Mixtape app. The Geschäftsführer is Marco Morocutti.

Overview

Radio Mixtape is available on DAB+ in the statewide digital radio multiplex of the audio.digital NRW GmbH on channel 9D (208.064 MHz), covering North Rhine-Westphalia and adjacent areas, plus the web stream and the dedicated Radio Mixtape app. The programme is aimed at the Best Ager target group: active, fun-loving, self-determined and affluent listeners seeking music and stories from their own life world, modern, honest and close to life. The playlist runs from the 1960s to the mid-1990s, from ABBA to Alphaville to a-ha, the songs that would have made it onto the personal mixtape, deliberately chosen, full of memories and emotions.

The sound deliberately recalls the beginnings of the NRW local radios in the 1990s, and the voices do too: well-known moderation personalities from the local radio scene such as Stephan Kaiser, Lissy Ishag and Monique van Schijndel, who shaped the NRW local stations in their early days, round out the programme. They stand for authenticity and closeness; they know what moves people in NRW, what they laugh about, what they want to hear on the radio. A moderated news format with the day's most important information complements the music-heavy programme.

History

The launch was announced on 27 October 2025 by the Verband Lokaler Rundfunk in NRW: on Wednesday, 29 October 2025, the DAB+ landscape in NRW would gain a new station, Radio Mixtape, the soundtrack of your life. The station went on air at 10 am on the appointed day, taking the 9D slot in the NRW multiplex and replacing Noxx, which was discontinued in the same move. As a Gemeinschaftsprojekt of RADIO NRW and the NRW local radios, it is the local radio system's collective answer to the Best Ager audience, a demographic the statewide framework had identified as underserved by the existing DAB+ offerings.

The timing was strategic. The NRW local radio system, with its 45 local stations and the Radio NRW framework, had built its DAB+ portfolio around the core local brands and a set of genre streams; the Best Ager segment, listeners who grew up with the local radios' launch in the early 1990s and are now in their prime earning and spending years, represented both an audience gap and a commercial opportunity. Radio Mixtape was designed to fill it with exactly the music and exactly the voices that generation remembers: the songs that smelled of the party cellar, as the launch release put it, and the moderators who were on air when NRW local radio was young.

The launch also marked a generational changing of the guard on the NRW multiplex. Noxx, the station that vacated the slot, belonged to an earlier phase of the DAB+ expansion; its discontinuation freed the capacity for a concept aimed squarely at the demographic that the local stations know best, their own original audience, now grown up. It is a neat symmetry: the system that launched in the early nineties now programmes for the listeners who launched with it, with the same voices that welcomed them in the first place.

Programming

The music programme is the station's heart: musical treasures from the sixties and favourite hits through the mid-nineties, the songs that trigger instant flashbacks, chosen for memory and emotion rather than chart position. The "Soundtrack deines Lebens" concept is more than a slogan; it is the programming principle, with every song selected as a memory trigger for the generation that made mixtapes on cassettes. The feel-good atmosphere and the lightness are deliberate: Radio Mixtape is not a news station and not a youth station, but a companion for the active Best Ager life.

The familiar voices are the second pillar. Oliver Behrendt, Stephan Kaiser, Monique van Schijndel and Lissy Ishag are names that the NRW local radio audience has known for decades, and their presence gives the new station an instant familiarity that a startup brand could never buy. These are the moderators who were there when the local stations went on air in the early nineties, and for the Best Ager listeners they are the audio equivalent of old friends: the voices that accompanied the morning drives to the first jobs, the evening shows of the young families, the weekends of the party cellar years. The moderated news format keeps the listeners connected to the day's most important information without breaking the feel-good mood. The combination, memory music, trusted voices, light news, is the formula for the Best Ager daypart.

Organization and Ownership

Radio Mixtape is a Gemeinschaftsprojekt of RADIO NRW and the NRW-Lokalradios, based in Oberhausen, where the Radio NRW operations are centred. The Geschäftsführer is Marco Morocutti. The station's economics follow the logic of the NRW system: a statewide DAB+ brand created collectively by the local stations and their framework provider, sharing the investment and the returns, and giving the local stations' sales houses an additional product for the Best Ager demographic.

The replacement of Noxx shows the system's willingness to reallocate its DAB+ capacity to where the audience and the advertisers are. Noxx, the predecessor on the slot, was discontinued to make room for a concept with a clearer target group and a stronger commercial proposition. In the competitive DAB+ landscape, where national brands and genre streams fight for attention, the Best Ager positioning gives Radio Mixtape a defined territory that few competitors serve as precisely, and the collective ownership gives it a resilience that a standalone startup could not match.

Digital Presence

Beyond the DAB+ distribution on channel 9D, Radio Mixtape is available as a web stream and through the Radio Mixtape app, putting the soundtrack of the listeners' lives on every smartphone and smart speaker. The digital presence is essential for a station whose target group, while rooted in the FM and DAB+ world, increasingly listens on connected devices. The website is the hub for the stream and the app, and the station's branding, the mixtape metaphor, the cassette-era nostalgia, translates naturally to the digital platforms where the Best Ager audience now spends its audio time.

Launched in October 2025 as the NRW local radio system's collective bet on the Best Ager generation, Radio Mixtape brings the music of the sixties to the mid-nineties, the voices of the nineties local radio pioneers and the feel-good promise of the soundtrack of your life to DAB+ channel 9D, the web stream and the app, from Oberhausen to the whole of North Rhine-Westphalia, and to everyone who ever made a mixtape, pressed record at just the right moment, and still remembers every single song.