19 Jul 10

RAJAR reports online and mobile listenership

by Craig McDonald, Trainee Planner/Buyer

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK have released results of recent research into online and mobile listenership.

The latest research from Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services (MIDAS) research now includes data from people who listen to radio via a mobile phone as well as via the internet and podcasts.

The research concluded that 20% of smartphone owners, equivalent to 1.4 million people in the UK, have downloaded a specific radio station app and 53% of them use their radio apps at least once a week. In addition, 13% of adults have listened to the radio directly via their mobile.

The number of consumers who have ever listened to radio via the internet was 16 million in June, down from the 17.4 million who have listened to radio via the internet in November. A spokesman for RAJAR said the June 2010 figures cannot be compared to previous results because a new weighting scheme was introduced using the mobile listeners population in addition to the internet listeners population and the podcast users population.

The research found that 31% of adults (16 million) claim to have ever listened to the radio via the internet with 29% listening live, up from 27% in November 2009 and 25% who have used time-shifted listening, up from 23%.

Of the consumers who have used listen again services, 71% said those services had no impact on the amount of live radio to which they listen to, down from 74% in November 2009. Half the respondents using listen-again services said they are now listening to programmes they did not listen to previously, the same proportion as in December 2009.

Of the 15% of the adult population who have downloaded a podcast, 75% of them said listening to podcasts had no impact on their live radio listening habits and 36% said they now listen to radio programmes they did not listen to previously.

These results prove to be an interesting challenge for the radio industry, as listenership becomes more fragmented and diverse as radio moves to mobile platforms and mirrors TV with catch up and on-demand services.