Digital only radio audience approaches the 5m mark

LONDON - Digital-only radio stations are closing in on the 5m audience mark, although sales of DAB sets have stalled, according to the Rajar figures for July-September.

Rajar's measurement of digital-only radio services shows that their weekly reach is now 4.79m people, up 3.9% over a quarter and 14.3% over a year.

Total weekly listening hours are now 27,913,000, up 3.4% over a quarter and 12.8% over a year.

Among the bigger digital-only station owners, Emap was the obvious winner this quarter. Its market leader The Hits grew its reach from 1.1m to 1.18m over the quarter and second-placed Smash Hits Radio went from 776,000 to 926,000. BBC7 was third with 697,000, up from 668,000.

GCap's digital-only stations did not have as good a quarter, with the biggest, Planet Rock adding only 5,000 more listeners to reach 422,000. Chill grew 7.8% to reach 124,000 but Core slipped 4.4% to 128,000.

Virgin Radio's three digital spin-offs had mixed fortunes. Classic Rock climbed 20% to 186,000, but Xtreme dropped 25% to 62,000 and Groove dropped 15% to 45,000.

In terms of the platforms through which listeners access digital radio, there was an unexpected pause in DAB set penetration, which had previously been rising consistently from quarter to quarter. This quarter, the percentage of adults who own a DAB set at home stayed at 15.3%.

The proportion of people listening via the TV also broke with its upward trend, dropping back from last quarter's record 38.9% to 38.7%.

The same measure for internet listening was down from 22.8% last quarter to 22.3% this quarter, although a year ago it was 19.7%. Mobile listening was up from 7% to 7.1%.

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