Travis Holcombe Continues to Champion Music Discovery Beyond the Algorithm After His Time at KCRW

Former KCRW host Travis Holcombe launched Freaks Only FM in May, expanding his former weeknight radio show into a 24-hour online station. He runs it from home, funding it through donations and subscriptions, and says subscribers, total listeners and listening hours have grown every month since launch.

Holcombe left Santa Monica-based public radio station KCRW amid layoffs in October 2025. The station cited federal budget cuts when it let go of 10% of its staff, including several longtime DJs. Holcombe declined an offer to continue hosting Freaks Only one night a week. After extended discussions with KCRW, he was allowed to keep the name.

“I felt like the only way for me to be able to continue doing what I was doing was to kind of carve my own lane,” he says.

His departure ended a 14-year tenure at KCRW. From 2014 to 2020, he hosted a weeknight show under his own name from 10 p.m. to midnight. He shared the 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. slot during the pandemic, then took it over full time with Freaks Only in 2021. The show ran for five years.

Freaks Only FM is available through its website and an app. “I know there are enough people who appreciated what I was doing that it would hopefully be enough to keep this afloat independently,” Holcombe says. He adds with a laugh, “if I don’t do this, I probably have to get some job I’m less excited about — I’m trying to avoid that.”

Holcombe spends at least two hours a day listening to new music on music sites and through radio promos sent to him. He typically creates four new hours of programming each day, though he occasionally produces eight when a show needs only a polish from work done the previous day. The shows are prerecorded.

“I approach it the way I did my live show at KCRW, and it’s often finished minutes before it airs,” he says.

The weekday schedule begins at 8 a.m. with The Percolator, a four-hour block of funk, indie rock, older favorites and more relaxed music. From noon to 8 p.m., flagship show Freak Parade leans toward electronic music while also featuring post-punk, disco, indie rock, hip-hop and new releases. Holcombe says it “goes anywhere genre-wise and is most similar to the old Freaks Only show on KCRW.” Freak Parade repeats from midnight to 8 a.m.

From 8 p.m. to midnight, Aux Out focuses on house, techno and disco. On weekends, the station airs shows from its existing programming catalog.

The streaming service Holcombe uses charges more as his audience grows. Its fees include licensing for all the music played, an arrangement he chose to respect music makers and leave the station positioned for possible future opportunities.

“There’s ways that I could go much cheaper and not worry about that at all,” he says, “But if this were ever to get upstreamed, I didn’t want to have to owe anybody money or have anyone feeling bad that I’ve been ripping them off or stealing music.”

Holcombe has recently received a few large donations but is focused on growing the subscriber base. “Obviously I love getting big donations,” he says, “but one of the many things I learned at KCRW is that we would always push for monthly subscriptions over one-time donations, because it was money we could count on from month to month.”

Holcombe believes listeners benefit from music selected by a person. Algorithm-driven listening, he says, “just finds lesser versions of stuff that you like over and over, and you need a refresh every now and then.”

Among his recommendations are Watergirls’ “The Whole of the Moon,” released by DFA in August and based on the 1985 song of the same name by Scottish band The Waterboys, and Black Marble’s most recent album, Life in Small Spaces. Both are in rotation on Freaks Only FM.

“If we don’t do a better job of fostering and supporting new music, it’s going to disappear, or it’s just going to be for nepo babies that can afford to go on tour or for kids straight out of college who have this dream and then they burn out in two or three years after they realize it’s not going to get better anytime soon,” Holcombe says.

Breaking new artists remains an industry-wide challenge in 2026, with streaming favoring catalog music, touring costs rising, an oversupply of new music and fragmented paths to discovering it. “You see it with the festivals, where there’s a lot more legacy acts being booked,” Holcombe says. “The model now is booking three legacy acts at the top and having a smattering of new bands playing at three in the afternoon.”

Holcombe also supports new artists through events. Last November, he launched a Freaks Only residency at Los Angeles’ Club Tee Gee, where he DJs every Friday. The next event is Nov. 13.

He curated the August compilation Freaks Only: Eskimo Selects 2014 to 2026, drawing on his favorite tracks from the second half of the Belgian label’s 25-year history. In June, he promoted a Freaks Only Presents show at Teragram Ballroom featuring Famous Friend, Floats and Camp Blu. The show sold 450 tickets.

That event led to Spin or Skip, a music hot-takes podcast Holcombe and Famous Friend will launch later this month. Upcoming guests include Asa Taccone of Electric Guest and Jack Quaid, from the Amazon superhero show The Boys.

“There’s nothing I love more than hearing a great song for the first time and being able to share it,” Holcombe says. “Chasing that feeling is the driving force that keeps me going.”

Source: Billboard