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Online listening is tiny, says Rajar
Joey Deacon
Posts: 3,926 Forum Member
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As I'm sad (I admit it) I had a browse through the Rajar Q3 2010 survey this evening.
This set of figures surprised me:
"Online listening was also marginally down quarter on quarter, from 2.9% to 2.8%, but up from 2.2% a year ago.
Digital TV accounted for 4.4% of all radio listening, up from 4.1% on the previous quarter and 3.6% last year".
I'm genuinely astonished at how low online listening appears to be. It's tiny.
And yet we all heavily promote our websites, don't we?
We all invest time and money keeping the online content fresh and the page designs looking good.
We've all got big Listen Live buttons at the top of the home page - and yet only 2.8% of listeners tune in online.
Makes you wonder whether the importance placed on having a great online presence was right or not.
This set of figures surprised me:
"Online listening was also marginally down quarter on quarter, from 2.9% to 2.8%, but up from 2.2% a year ago.
Digital TV accounted for 4.4% of all radio listening, up from 4.1% on the previous quarter and 3.6% last year".
I'm genuinely astonished at how low online listening appears to be. It's tiny.
And yet we all heavily promote our websites, don't we?
We all invest time and money keeping the online content fresh and the page designs looking good.
We've all got big Listen Live buttons at the top of the home page - and yet only 2.8% of listeners tune in online.
Makes you wonder whether the importance placed on having a great online presence was right or not.
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RAJAR does not record listening outside the UK. Nor is it the best way to gather listening stats.
Leaving pc listening aside it is not a straight forward task to browse stations on an internet radio. With a DAB radio you just switch on and browse the list. With an internet radio you have to access the menu and choose 'stations' then 'continent' then 'UK' and finally have a list of approx 1,000 stations to sift through. You can choose the 'genre' route but this is equally bulky.
Finding new stations is a mamouth task for the average/non-tech user.
The issue is whether UK stations expect or even want us to listen via internet radios at all. As Joey Deacon says, they put a lot of work into their web sites yet if you use an internet radio you never see the web site. Presumably the extra content is intended to drive online listening and build loyalty by making the station's web site your first choice for news, weather, travel, competitions etc, but none of that is any use if you're listening via a wi-fi radio.
I guess the idea is that young people are pretty much glued to their PCs so they wouldn't use a standalone internet radio.
The IMDA is also sorting out an EPG standard for newer internet radio sets which are starting to get better displays
http://www.imdalliance.org/?s=epg
The mass media is still (even after all this time) a bit freaked by the web. Especially newspapers, but also radio where web sites can be complete rubbish. Especially at smaller stations.
True, driving people to your site can't do any harm and makes cold, hard, cash.
Beyond the BBC and a handful of regional commercial stations, web sites aren't much cop.
Listening online isn't as convenient in most homes as FM, DAB or via the telly, so that leaves the car (rare and needs new kit), the office (if you've got PPL/PRS or headphones) or your phone (expensive and technically iffy).
So until it's easier and cheaper, online listening is a niche, albeit and important one to focus on in the future.
[QUOTE=hanssolo;The IMDA is also sorting out an EPG standard for newer internet radio sets which are starting to get better displays
http://www.imdalliance.org/?s=epg [/QUOTE]
Perhaps this is the answer, someone can probably make a fortune out of an epg. Sky do.
It would be better to have an inet radio that had a much more user friendly menu. For example - If I could store the function that searches for Inet stations from the UK only which have a music genre of 80/90s. And this function was available at the touch of a single button (programmed by the user) would be ideal.
Second websites need to get the stations listed on mobile apps such as Streem Furious. despite the potential cost people do use phones to listen and its growing
Third has to be content. some of these stations sound dire. I don't mind listening to bedroom radio or something if its good but if you don't have the skill to present properly then don't. Do a jukebox station which unlike for FM is just fine for internet radio. Of course you can't forget the music as well unless that is something unique its unlikely that people will keep coming back
RAJAR figures also only refer to live listening, add on Listen Again and podcasts and internet delivered audio services, as RAJAR calls them, assume more significance.
The RAJAR Midas 7 survey of internet delivered audio services was published December 15:
http://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/MIDAS7_news_release.pdf
Shows strong awareness of internet radio, even if people aren't listening live every week.
Does not really surprise, reading areas like here that are populated by enthusiasts/geeks/whatever gives the wrong impression of numbers. Also at levels that low I would not pay too much attention to a change of less than one per cent because that must be well within the uncertainty of the figures.
I have an Internet radio and unlimited broadband connection but hardly ever use it, it seemed to work OK last time I tried but never seemed as reliable as DAB or VHF FM.
I have an internet radio and probably use it for more than 50% of my listening. It completely replaces live radio for programmes such as Just A Minute or Brain Of Britain because I can listen at a time that suits me. We all take timeshifted TV for granted thanks to VCRs/PVRs, Sky+ or Freeview recorders so using podcasts/on demand radio is the logical way to listen to radio, too. And there are some great stations in the US and Europe which stream at decent bit rates.
RAJAR figures are based on a diary, a different system than TV, so it would complicate things if respondents had also to fill in a separate chart with their listen again details, which would mainly be BBC.
James Cridland in his blog a couple of months ago said that 30% of all internet radio listening on the BBC’s iPlayer is Listen Again.
BBC Press Office's annual report on the Iplayer said that the programme with the highest audience on internet radio, and they combine on demand and simulcast requests in their figures, was 317,000 for England v Slovenia, the top 6 were sports programmes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/12_december/23/iplayer.pdf
I wouldn't be without them, they have improved my listening experience dramatically, especially the listen on demand facility.
Odd that, I thought all the extra content, including a lot they wont tell you about on air, but tease you to the website via it, was so they can go to their advertisers and say "Look how many hits our website gets!! Were HUGE and you should buy some site space"
That's where internet radio gets its listeners, not the station's own websites.
Perhaps stations don't want too many out-of-area listeners - foreign listeners just push up the cost of music royalties without adding value for local advertisers.
Joey, I don't think 2.8% is LISTENERS, more likely HOURS of all listeners got from the data.
The only time I use internet is if a station is not on my DAB. The otehr 97.2% of my listening is done with the DAB or the Skybox.
John
Pretend you're a potential client thinking of radio advertising and look at heart.co.uk for some information. You can contact an Exec, but nobody who isn't mental is going to divulge their contact info to any sales person until they're more or less already sold on a product.
Perhaps stations don't need more advertising?
Most stations do have a decent number of ads on their websites.
Often though - certainly in my experience - the online advertising banners are thrown in by the sales team as a freebie to entice the client to sign up for a good-sized on air campaign.
Online advertising is one of the tools some sales teams are able to use to get that awkward client signed up.
You could well be right there John, I was quoting the Rajar info from the Guardian website.
What's also interesting is that there is more radio listening via TV than via the internet.
I think it's good to delve into this kind of data in detail - even though it is very nerdy.
The more you know about your audience the better.
James Cridland did a recent blog post about this, analysis of Absolute's figures and a link to the BBC's ones:
http://james.cridland.net/blog/stats-how-absolute-radio-is-consumed-online/
Perhaps they want listeners to use the website and perhaps attract new listeners. Excessive advertising on a website is often counter-productive.
The UKradioplayer will allow commercial stations space for their ads in the player.
http://www.ukradioplayer.info/post/500441506/an-early-concept-video-showing-potential-ways The UKradioplayer company and the IMDA EPG for internet sets are only supposed to cover costs and not make a profit.
For internet sets if the IMDA EPG arrives it will be integrated into the Reciva and Silicon Frontier/vtuner/pure firmware. So far Logitech who make the squeezebox do not seem to be members of the IMDA!
The BBC at one stage when using Real only allowed Worldservice to stream outside the UK, but seems to now allow other BBC stations to do this and had listings on windowsmedia.com which is the Microsoft mediaplayer default directory. Currently for some reason BBC Asian network is 2in the top stations favourites list and r2 is under Classic rock.
Unlike Global, GMG or Bauer, the Absolute radio group has Global ambitions and tries to get on international station lists.
Shoutcast.com listing is only for stations that Nullsoft/AOL host, so there are not many UK based stations on it.
I've noticed a number of friends who use iPhone broadband etc saying that the services have been getting less and less reliable (and bandwidth getting more expensive), just in the past year. The problem with mobile broadband is that while few people use the data-intensive parts, it works. But when a lot of people use it, the approach of streaming TV and radio over the airwaves hits the concrete limit of the size of the airwaves available (and probably before that the amount of GSM transmitting metalwork people are prepared to tolerate in their street).
With streaming, you need one signal per listener, instead of one signal per broadcaster. However you package it, that's very inefficient, and I can't see how it could possibly work if everyone tried to use it at once.
I discovered recently that I can listen to online radio on my iPhone all the way home from Oxford Circus to Chiswick (by bus, obviously). On the other hand, the 3G signal drops out very quickly going west towards Ealing. So even in built-up areas it's not 100% reliable.
It has been stated by those in the media and telecoms industries and if everybody that listens to Chris Evans at Breakfast on Radio 2 were to do so online/internet PC then then entire UK internet streaming system would collapse. That, unfortunately does not even include Today listeners on R4. Even The Archers audience all online at lunchtime on R4 would see no internet service anywhere.
'Broadcasting over the airwaves' will still be the case for the best part of this century.