Ska Radio Online: Ska, Rocksteady and 2 Tone Live

Published 24 September 2026

You can listen to ska radio online in any browser, with no download and no account: open 72FM, search for a station's name, and press play. Ska has stations for every wave of it — Jamaican originals, rocksteady, British 2 Tone and ska-punk.

Jamaican ska and rocksteady

• Alpha Boys School Radio — jazz, reggae and ska from the Kingston school that trained many of Jamaica's great horn players.
• SomaFM Heavyweight Reggae — reggae, rocksteady and ska, with a 256kbps stream.
• Bob's Ska Radio — ska, rocksteady and reggae from Tacoma.

Ska-punk and more

• Ska World — ska from the 60s to the 80s, from Germany.
• Radio Bob Ska Stream — ska and ska-punk.
• Laut.FM Skafari — ska and punk.
• REAL PUNK RADIO and Punkrockers Radio — punk with ska in the mix.

Three waves

Ska began in Jamaica in the late 1950s and led to rocksteady and reggae; Britain's 2 Tone movement revived it at the end of the 1970s, and a third wave of ska-punk followed in the US in the 1990s. Reggae radio, Jamaican radio and punk radio go further.

How to hear the waves

Ska is built on the offbeat "skank" of guitar and piano and on horn sections. The Skatalites — several of them trained at the Alpha Boys School — along with Prince Buster and Desmond Dekker defined the Jamaican sound in the 1960s. In 1979 the 2 Tone label in Coventry launched The Specials, The Selecter and, briefly, Madness, mixing ska with punk energy. The third wave, from bands such as The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish, added distorted guitars. Rocksteady, slower and smoother, is the bridge from ska to reggae.

A route in

1. Alpha Boys School Radio, for the Jamaican roots.
2. Bob's Ska Radio, for all three waves.
3. Radio Bob Ska Stream, for ska-punk.

For Seattle and Tacoma, Seattle radio online is next.