RotD Music Editor Lee Thompson examines this quarter's Rajar results

31 July 2014 - Editorial

“Oh, I don't listen to the radio anymore. Why would I need to when I can build my own Spotify playlists and hear the songs I really like, as opposed to the ones some DJ wants to play me”.

Not sure about you, but I hear this sort of thing from friends and acquaintances all the bloody time. Turns out they're probably lying.

Nine out of 10 of us over the age of 15 listen to the radio each week here in the UK. To put that into context, the figure was 91.7% this time three years ago and now it's 89.8%. Considering all that's going on to distract us elsewhere, that's a remarkably resilient performance, if you ask me.

On average we listen for three hours a day (21.4 hours a week to be precise) with 51% of us doing so via digital platforms like DAB, digital TV or online. Out of those three formats, only digital TV has fallen. The big growth area is listening via mobile devices and tablets; 22% of us do that now at least once a month, an increase of over 50% year on year. The key driver here is undoubtedly 15-24 year olds with more than a third (36%) now listening this way. The rise seems to be fuelled in part by social media with 38% of adults under 25 saying they receive updates via Twitter and Facebook about their favourite station and its presenters. When I last presented on radio 13 years ago, people were yet to get to grips with even emailing the station, we still used a fax machine and most interaction came by picking up the landline – how times change.

One thing which continues to fascinate me is that although technology moves on at such a rapid pace, '80s music seems to resonate with us all three decades later. This time four years ago, digital only station Absolute 80s had 288,000 listeners and was deemed a success even then, on what was initially considered a somewhat-limiting radio platform. Today, it's recorded its highest ever listenership – an amazing 1.245 million each week. That makes it second only to 6 Music in terms of reach and the no.1 commercial station on DAB. Our love affair with the cheesier, familiar end of what that remarkable decade brought us musically still shows no sign of waning. You just had to witness how packed the tent was for The Human League at T In The Park to appreciate how adored pop anthems like Together In Electric Dreams and Don’t You Want Me were still cherished by all ages, something we tend to easily gloss over as an industry when spending a fortune on developing new acts.

It's always fun trying to cut through the spin, utter bullshit and positive press releases that each of the key players put out and get to the real heart of what the figures reveal. Whenever a radio-group mentions growth across their network year on year, it generally means this quarter's figures are rough. That certainly seems to be the case for Bauer. Many of their stations based in major UK cities like Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow have delivered poor results. Key 103 is down, Hallam has posted its lowest audience reach in more than five years and Clyde has its worst in two years. One contributory factor for the Scottish station though (and this does seem to be the case with many Central Scotland stations this survey, all of whom dropped) is that Radio 1 pumped a lot of cash, publicity and effort into May’s Big Weekend event in Glasgow with a stellar international line-up, making it hard for local incumbents to fight back against that backdrop. If you’re working at Clyde, Forth or even Xfm in Scotland, there’s your ‘get out of jail free card’ for this reporting period.

Looking at London, it’s swings and roundabouts as always. Capital is back as the no.1 commercial station with Magic about 200,000 listeners behind each week. As ever though, both are outshone by Radio 4 (still the most-listened-to station in the city, with 2.6 million tuning in per week) and Radio 2 (2.3 million). Radio 1 completes the Top 5 with Kiss, Heart, Classic FM, BBC 5Live and LBC making up the rest of the Top 10. Xfm has only a third of the number of listeners of the tenth-ranked station LBC, by the way (982,000 vs 394,000)

Outside London, keep an eye on the Heart name in the regions. When owners Global decided to rebrand many heritage stations across the UK there was the usual uproar from loyal listeners who’d tuned into their favourite (but often poorly-performing) local service for decades. Now, go for long drive anywhere in the country and you’ll find it hard to escape Heart almost everywhere. It’s working for them though. One glance at this week’s playlist and it’s familiar, unchallenging stuff – Locked Out Of Heaven by Bruno Mars is still getting heavy rotation more than 18 months after it was a No.1 hit. Calvin Harris, Ella Henderson, Cheryl and Sam Smith from this week’s chart sit alongside Pink from 2012, OneRepublic and Avicii from 2013. Seventeen songs, endlessly repeated over and over with big songs from the '80s, '90s and '00s. Who are we to argue?

Finally, at the headline-grabbing end of things, Grimmy is up at Radio 1 (though I sense with over-25s, just on anecdotal evidence as no-one I ever speak to under 20 seems to be able to cope with him first-thing), Chris Evans continues to grow at Radio 2 (although the station overall has taken a miniscule fall quarter on quarter) and 6 Music now has more listeners than Radio 3. Just don’t expect the governors of the BBC to ever suggest closing the station down to save money – its existence is far too political and beloved in very high places for that very idea to ever be considered.

So that’s it for another quarter. One last thing - if your numbers are down compared to the January to March survey, you might want to start upping the rotation on Pharrell’s Happy and Clean Bandit’s Rather Be yet again as they were the airplay smashes from early 2014. If your numbers are up, like Heart, it’s maybe because you are still battering them to death on your A-list. Or is that purely a coincidence?