The Radioplayer boom and speaking with one voice

UK Radioplayer celebrates its ninth birthday next year.

First announced in 2009, as a partnership between the BBC and commercial radio, it was initially a Flash-based web console before developing iOS and Android apps. 

Its key aim was to improve the online experience for listeners by delivering an attractive and interactive solution for client stations, but it was also a bid to speed up digital growth with the internet accounting for a mere 3% share of all listening according to RAJAR.

In Radioplayer's first few months, having started with around 150 stations, it attracted 5.7m unique users. Today, that figure stands at 7.6m with more than 400 radio stations and listening via online and apps has increased by 10 percentage points (still impressive considering internet growth has been slower in the UK owing to the strength of our DAB market).

Fast-forward to 2019 and Spain has just become the 12th country to adopt the Radioplayer platform. It's one of the UK radio industry's biggest success stories.

Despite the BBC and the main players in commercial radio no longer directing listeners to Radioplayer, their stations are still available on the app and, as stakeholders, they remain committed to supporting the organisation's current primary focus on striking deals with the automotive sector to secure radio's in-car future as the prominence of connected vehicles grows.

Radioplayer and Radiocentre demonstrate the benefits of working together to achieve everyone's best interests. The commercial case for building one's own listening platform is strong and I don't blame an established group with the scale of Global or Bauer for doing so.

The wider point to make is that, as radio competition intensifies, it may seem as though the industry is becoming increasingly fragmented - but, for a sector faced with powerful new digital rivals, speaking with one voice has never been more important.

Magic 100% Christmas returns

Bauer has announced Magic will play 100% Christmas music again for 2019 starting at 9am tomorrow.

While the festive format flip is commonplace in the lesser-regulated US market, with hundreds of stations making the temporary switch each year, a flagship UK radio outlet had never made this bold move before Magic twelve months ago.

It's a proven audience winner in the States and in the UK we've seen a sprinkling of all-Christmas stations over the last decade at both a local and national level.

Magic is synonymous today with a more upbeat and positive feel than its former easy-listening self making the festive theme a perfect fit. It's a strong brand with a loyal listenership and brand extensions to cross-promote too, reducing the risk of post-Christmas churn.

Social media may not be the most accurate representation of anything but the response from followers is largely positive which does offer a flavour of the wider audience reaction.

We can’t tell from RAJAR how Magic performed in December alone as each set of data is recorded over a three-month period, but given it added 45k listeners in London and a whopping 227k listeners nationally in 2018 Q4, I don’t think Bauer will be too worried.

What's more, Sky Cinema obviously see commercial benefits having returned for 2019 as the headline sponsor of Magic 100% Christmas.

Petition to save the good old-fashioned "best of..."

Here's a question: why does no UK talk radio station do a packaged show looking back at the best calls of the week?

I ask because, in any debate, only a small percentage of calls are "radio gold" so a tightly-packaged highlights show, drawing output from across the entire station, would be a good listen (as is LBC's Callers of the Year at Christmas).

Many individual shows have "best of" compilations available either on-air or as a podcast but I'm surprised there's nothing that showcases a whole station as a shop window.

Some would argue it's the "kind of thing you do as a podcast these days" rather than broadcast but the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, while there's more than one way of preparing and/or delivering it, it's all audio made by creative people going into ears.

Live has unique benefits, primarily instant listener interaction and reactivity, but if not being used to its advantage a well-produced pre-recorded show might be preferable. Both have their place.

I'm not of the view that radio's success is largely down to liveness. People love radio because it's helpful in some way. That could mean interesting, thought-provoking, educating or entertaining - and when playing your best bits, you can be sure you're ticking one or more of those boxes.

Ofcom study: live radio leads smart-speaker usage

Back in May, Ofcom's Online Nation report revealed the following data on smart-speaker usage:

• 20% of UK homes now have a smart-speaker compared with 13% two years ago
• 56% use theirs to listen to live radio
• 47% search for information
• 46% ask about the weather
• 36% set alarms and schedule reminders
• 34% get news reports

If one thing's for sure, it's that linear radio is not dying. We know reach has long remained static, hovering around the 90% mark, and digital now accounts for 56.8% of all listening. The device is changing but the overall number is not.

RAJAR's latest MIDAS survey also found that 75% of listening on smart-speakers is to live radio, vs 23% for podcasts/listen again, having grown its share of all radio listening to 7% (sounds small in the grand scheme of things but it's early days and DAB & FM still dominate - smart-speakers are now level with PCs which have been mainstream for a lot longer and just six percentage points behind smartphones).

With many homes being wireless-less, smart speakers are effectively reinstating the good old-fashioned radio which is something to celebrate.

Of course, going forward as online sees further growth, competition from both more radio stations and new skills/services will only increase as it becomes more and more of a level playing field.

The never-ending CHR evolution

In the early 90s, CHR in the US was undergoing an identity crisis due to the rise of alt-rock, hip-hop and country music.

Z100 infamously transitioned from Top 40 to AC and then to alt-rock interspersed with the day's big hits from core pop artists. Its audience and market share tanked.

The current music scene has and will always change - and in 2019, far from the "homogenisation" described to many of us by our grandparents (albeit not mine), we are witnessing the rise of some properly distinctive artists - from Billie Eilish to Post Malone, and many more.

In fact, there is such diversity that CHR programmers are faced with a real challenge in maintaining a station sound (which is vital for all music radio) while reflecting different mainstream tastes, and they are having to take more risks.

The switch to DAB+ - rescan and retune

Radio X has just made the switch from DAB to DAB+ prompting some listeners to vent their frustration saying they are having to change station as their device or car radio is incompatible.

For the uninitiated, DAB+ is essentially just upgraded technology that makes more efficient use of the available spectrum allowing more stations to broadcast. DAB+ services can transmit up to three times more data meaning higher quality audio and a more reliable signal.

DAB+ is already standard in Australia and parts of Europe but despite the roaring success of digital radio in the UK we're still behind on this front. That said, any device bought new since 2013 is compatible so a simple rescan will be sufficient in these cases.

Cars are a different kettle of fish and present a risk for stations but they would say the benefits outweigh the risk. There'll be people driving incompatible old bangers for at least another decade.

I think any retune campaign needs significant time. Frankly, normal people have more important things to worry about even if it's merely the touch of a button. There are people who still think my local Heart is 2-Ten FM for heaven's sake.

RAJAR Q3 2019 - Brexit boost for commercial talk and more

I'll leave the hard-hitting analysis to Matt and Adam, as ever, but there are some interesting headlines from Q3:

• LBC adds 113k to make its highest ever reach and talkRADIO adds 23k listeners - you'd think they have benefitted from some sort of political turmoil! However, 5 Live and Radio 4 are both down.

• 105.4 loses to 95.8 in London by literally one RAJAR diary - with 5,000 more listeners, Magic would've beaten Capital as the city's number one.

• Hits Radio is up 29k nationally, despite the station formerly known as Key 103 still struggling (although it was seeing decline pre-Hits). Meanwhile its ten-month-old sister brand, Greatest Hits Radio, is up a whopping 103k.

• It's still too soon but the introduction of national breakfast shows hasn't noticeably harmed or benefitted Global this quarter as Capital, Heart and Smooth remain fairly static. For Capital's youth audience, it's all about the hits and showbiz gossip so if anything you’d expect national content and star guests to be more appealing.