Zanna Records reaches Faroe Islands 493-Stations - 99 Countries - 6 Continents
- Jul 24
- 4 min read
Gianluca Zanna's music reaches 6.9 million listeners on a single German broadcast — and a Faroese town of five thousand. He says the second one interests him more.
SEDONA, ARIZONA — Zanna Records' catalog now airs on 493 radio stations across 99 countries and territories on six continents, verified through WARM (World Airplay Radio Monitor) and Songstats. Most coverage of independent airplay focuses on the biggest numbers. The label's founder would rather talk about the smallest.
Klaksvík, population 5,000
On July 22, 2026, FM 98.7 in Klaksvík played “You Are My Destiny (Future Remix).”
Klaksvík is the second town of the Faroe Islands, an archipelago of eighteen volcanic islands in the North Atlantic, roughly halfway between Iceland and Norway, with a total population of about 54,000. The town itself has around 5,000 residents. The station broadcasts in Faroese — a language spoken by fewer people than live in most mid-sized American suburbs — and describes itself simply as “eitt lokal radio í Klaksvík.” A local radio in Klaksvík.
Nobody pitched them. The station found the record and has been playing Zanna's music since 2025.
And then there is Antarctica
Further out still: Ice Radio, broadcasting from McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Antarctica — the continent's largest research base, staffed by scientists and support crews, with no permanent population at all. It is the placement that gives Zanna Records its sixth continent, and it is almost certainly the most remote audience any independent artist from Arizona could hope to reach.
“People always want to talk about the six-point-nine million in Germany,” Zanna said, referring to NDR 1 Niedersachsen, the largest single-play audience in his catalog. “And I am grateful for it. But a fishing town in the North Atlantic, and a research station on the ice — those are the ones I think about. Somebody in Klaksvík chose my song out of everything in the world they could have played. There is no algorithm out there. There is no marketing. There is a person who liked it.”
“I live on a dirt road in the desert where my nearest neighbor is a mile away,” he added. “Maybe that is why the far edges of the map mean something to me. I know what it is to be a long way from everything.”
The rest of the map
Between those extremes sit 491 other stations. The BBC in the United Kingdom.
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta in Ireland — the world's only national station broadcasting entirely in Irish — which picked up Zanna's work unsolicited, twice in one week.
Nogoum FM 100.6 in Cairo, Egypt's first private radio station.
Stations in Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Moscow and Kyiv, Kingston and Diyarbakır.
Fourteen stations across nine Arab countries; ten across Israel; eleven across Turkey.
The numbers, as of July 2026
• 493 radio stations across 99 countries & territories on 6 continents (WARM + Songstats verified)
• Largest single-play audience: NDR 1 Niedersachsen, Germany — 6,900,000
• Most remote placements: Ice Radio, McMurdo Station, Antarctica; FM 98.7, Klaksvík, Faroe Islands
• “You Are My Destiny (Danny Saber Remix)” feat. Joseph Wooten — released June 21, 2026; past 1 million plays on YouTube Music in roughly one month
• 1.08 million monthly YouTube Music audience;
• top 5% of streamed songwriters worldwide
• “Wake Up America”: 20+ million TikTok views from over 100,000 creator videos; licensed to the acclaimed public radio program This American Life
A million plays, and the players behind them
The catalog has also been passing milestones of its own — and quickly. “You Are My Destiny (Danny Saber Remix),” featuring keyboardist Joseph Wooten, was released on June 21, 2026 and passed one million plays on YouTube Music roughly a month later.
Wooten has held the keyboard chair in the Steve Miller Band for decades and is a member of the Wooten Brothers; Danny Saber is a producer and remixer whose credits include work with the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Black Grape. Both worked on a record made by an independent label with no major-label backing, run from a ranch in the Arizona desert. The promotional budget behind the release was ten dollars of YouTube advertising; the rest of the million arrived from listeners finding it on their own.
Built alone, from the high desert
Zanna Records operates with no major-label backing, no plugger, and no promotional budget. Gianluca Zanna runs the label from a 20-acre off-grid property in the Arizona high desert — solar power, well water, satellite internet. He arrived in the United States from Rome in 1998 with almost nothing, having watched a business collapse and spent roughly fifteen months living on the streets of Rome, performing as a costumed gladiator near the Imperial Forums. His catalog now spans more than 150 original compositions across EDM, rock, classical, and operatic styles.
MEDIA CONTACT
Zanna Records · www.zannarecords.com email zanna@zanna.us
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