Pure Dance is a British online

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

specialising in

dance music Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole piece or part of a larger musical arrangement. In terms of performance, the major categories are live dance music and recorded dance musi ...

History

Originally active in the early 2000s, Pure Dance broadcast on satellite television and online via

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. Audio encoded in WMA is stored in a digi ...

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimed ...

, and

mp3PRO mp3PRO is an unmaintained proprietary audio compression codec that combines the MP3 audio format with the spectral band replication (SBR) compression method. At the time it was developed it could reduce the size of a stereo MP3 by as much as 50% ...

streams. Typical music included

trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...

hardcore Hardcore, hard core or hard-core may refer to: Arts and media Film * ''Hardcore'' (1977 film), a British comedy film * ''Hardcore'' (1979 film), an American crime drama film starring George C Scott * ''Hardcore'' (2001 film), a British documen ...

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air c ...

, and

club music Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. It is generally produced for playback by DJs who create s ...

. Presenters included Warren Street, Dan Wood, Matt Forest, Ryan Morrison, Ben & Nixxi,

Stu Allan Stu Allan (6 February 1962 – 22 September 2022) was a British dance music DJ and producer who worked for Piccadilly Radio and Key 103 in Manchester in the 1980s and 1990s. His hip hop, hardcore techno and house music mixes ranked him the wo ...

, Billy 'Daniel' Bunter,

Slipmatt Matthew Nelson (born 22 April 1967 in Loughton, Essex, England), better known as DJ Slipmatt, is a British electronic music producer and DJ. He was one half of breakbeat hardcore group SL2, who had a 1992 UK hit with " On a Ragga Tip". Biogr ...

Lisa Lashes Lisa Lashes (born Lisa Dawn Rose-Wyatt on 23 April 1971 in Coventry, England) is an English electronic dance music DJ and producer known for mixing numerous ''Euphoria'' albums and her Lashed dance music events. She has headlined European and ...

Agnelli & Nelson Agnelli & Nelson are the collective name of Northern Irish music producers Christoper James Agnew and Robert Frederick Nelson, writers and producers of electronic dance music who have worked in the genre of trance from 1997. They also produced ...

, and

Warp Brothers Warp Brothers is the electronic dance music group started by German DJs Oliver Goedicke and Jürgen Dohr in 1999. Their style includes house, trance, breakbeat and electro in early days, lately hard dance, trance and psytrance. At the beginning ...

. The station relaunched in mid-2024 and now broadcasts 24/7 online and via smart speakers, with plans to expand to small-scale DAB across the UK in 2025.

Closure

In November 2005, Pure Dance was put up for sale by its owners. It was reported at the time that the station had "a regular audience of nearly one million listeners every month, primarily in the 16–30 year old age group". The station began falling silent for long periods in January 2006, with its website and web streams going offline. It was removed from the

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...

EPG in early 2006 after over two weeks of silence.

Relaunch

In April 2024, a

Mixcloud Mixcloud is a British online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users. In April 2018, Mixcloud announced that it raised $11.5 mi ...

page was created featuring archived specialist shows from the original Pure Dance broadcasts. The station officially relaunched later that year with a new online stream and updated programming. It is operated by Pure Dance (Radio) Limited and is licensed by

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and mail, postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-rang ...

under a Digital Sound Programme (DSP) licence.

References

External links

* {{Official website Electronic dance music radio stations in the United Kingdom Radio stations established in 2004 Radio stations disestablished in 2006 Radio stations established in 2024