There is no shortage of radio automation software. There is a very short list of free radio automation software that is actually worth using. And right now, that list has one serious entry.
Let’s be honest about what the free radio automation landscape looks like. There are options out there. Some are genuinely free. Some are “free” with the asterisks that word carries in software: limited time, limited features, limited support, or a business model that involves selling your data or your attention. Very few are free in the way that matters for a station trying to do real radio on a real budget: no expiration, no crippled features, no strings.
TuneTracker System 7 Free is that kind of free. And we think that, when people figure that out, the conversation about the best free radio automation system in the world is going to be a short one.
The free tier of most radio automation software gives you a demo. You get a limited window of time, a limited number of tracks, a reduced feature set, or some combination of all three. The implicit message is: this is enough to evaluate us, but not enough to run a station on. Pay up or move on.
Some open-source options exist, and we respect the effort behind them. But open-source radio software has historically required significant technical investment to set up and maintain, and it tends to produce results that are workable rather than polished. For a volunteer at a community station or a teacher setting up school radio, “workable” isn’t good enough.
That comparison is not close. And it’s why we believe System 7 Free is going to become the default answer when someone asks where to start with radio automation and doesn’t have a budget to work with.
We want to be careful not to undersell what 250 audio files actually means in practice. It’s easy to read that number and assume it’s a meaningful constraint. For some stations, it eventually will be. For many, it’s all they’ll ever need.
A 250-file library at a typical song length gives you roughly 13 hours of non-repeating music. Add rotation logic through AutoCast’s scheduling engine and that plays out across days before listeners hear the same track twice. Most LPFM stations, internet radio stations focused on a niche genre, and educational broadcasters operate comfortably within that range. The file limit is where System 7 Free stops, not where it starts to feel cramped.
And everything that makes System 7 a professional tool is fully available within those 250 files: format clocks, dayparting, category rotation, voice tracking, live assist, library management, scheduling. Nothing is turned off. Nothing is waiting for you to pay.
The short version: we believe in the product and we believe in broadcasting.
The longer version starts with the product. We spent years building System 7 to be the best radio automation software on the Mac platform. Not good for the price. Not better than the alternative. The best. When you’ve built something you’re genuinely proud of, giving people access to it isn’t a sacrifice — it’s confidence. We’re not worried that you’ll use the free tier forever and never give us anything. We’re betting that once you use it, you’ll understand why you would want to.
The longer version also includes something we care about for its own sake: local radio. Community broadcasting. The stations that play the city council meeting and interview the high school coach and remember what small-town radio used to be. Those stations matter, and many of them operate on budgets that make software licensing feel like a luxury. If we can remove that barrier, we want to.
That’s not a marketing position. It’s the reason we built the free tier the way we did: as a complete, functional system, not a restricted preview.
When your library grows past 250 files — and many stations will reach that point — upgrading to a full System 7 license is a natural next step, not a wall you run into. The license unlocks unlimited files and a handful of additional capabilities designed for stations with deeper libraries and more complex programming needs.
The pricing is structured to be accessible to the stations that use TuneTracker: community radio, LPFM, small-market commercial, educational. It is not priced for chains with IT departments and procurement budgets. And critically: everything you’ve built in the free tier — your clocks, your library organization, your schedules, your voice tracks — carries over completely. There is nothing to rebuild.
It’s a model built on the assumption that if we take good care of you at the start, you’ll want to stay.
If you’ve been thinking about getting on the air but the software cost has been part of what’s held you back, let’s remove that from the equation right now. System 7 Free is:
The question isn’t really whether System 7 is the best free radio automation option available. We think it’s not particularly close. The question is whether you’re going to download it today or wait another month while your station stays off the air.
The download takes a minute. The setup takes an afternoon. The station can be on the air by tomorrow.
Full-featured professional radio automation for Mac. Up to 250 audio files, no time limit, no credit card, no catch.
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