Despite FM having been patented in 1933, commercial FM broadcasting did not begin until the late 1930s, when it was initiated by a handful of early pioneer stations including W8HK, Buffalo, New York (now WTSS); W1XOJ/WGTR/WSRS, Paxton, Massachusetts (now listed as Worcester, Massachusetts); W1XSL/W1XPW/WDRC-FM, Meriden, Connecticut (now WHCN); W2XMN/KE2XCC/WFMN, Alpine, New Jersey (owned by Edwin Armstrong himself, closed down upon Armstrong's death in 1954); W2XQR/WQXQ/WQXR-FM, New York; W47NV Nashville, Tennessee (now WSM-FM); W1XER/W39B/WMNE, whose studios were in Boston but whose transmitter was atop the highest mountain in the northeast United States, Mount Washington, New Hampshire (shut down in 1948); W9XAO Milwaukee, Wisconsin (later WTMJ-FM, off air in 1950, returning in 1959 on another frequency). Also of note are General Electric stations W2XDA Schenectady and W2XOY New Scotland, New York—two experimental frequency modulation transmitters on 48.5 MHz—which signed on in 1939. The two were merged into one station using the W2XOY call letters on November 20, 1940, with the station taking the WGFM call letters a few years later, and moving to 99.5 MHz when the FM band was relocated to the 88-108 MHz portion of the radio spectrum. General Electric sold the station in the 1980s, and today the station is called WRVE.

On June 1, 1961, at 12:01 a.m. (EDT), WGFM became the first FM station in the United States to broadcast in stereo.

The first commercial FM broadcasting stations were in the United States, but initially they were primarily used to simulcast their AM sister stations, to broadcast lush orchestral music for stores and offices, to broadcast classical music to an upmarket listenership in urban areas, or for educational programming. By the late 1960s, FM had been adopted by fans of "Alternative Rock" music ("A.O.R.—'Album Oriented Rock' Format"), but it wasn't until 1978 that listenership to FM stations exceeded that of AM stations in North America. During the 1980s and 1990s, Top 40 music stations and later even country music stations largely abandoned AM for FM. Today AM is mainly the preserve of talk radio, news, sports, religious programming, ethnic (minority language) broadcasting and some types of minority interest music. This shift has transformed AM into the "alternative band" that FM once was. (Some AM stations have begun to simulcast on, or switch to, FM signals to attract younger listeners and aid reception problems in buildings, during thunderstorms, and near high-voltage wires. Some of these stations now emphasize their presence on the FM dial.)

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