A British audience research firm says that one out of every three adults in the United Kingdom “now claims to have listened to the radio via the internet.”
“Claims”? Reading UK audience research takes a little getting used to. There’s a skepticism for the subject cohort that you don’t find in the United States. In any event, here’s the main finding of the Rajar research service:
“One third (33.9%) of the UK’s adult population (15+) or 17.4 million people claim to have ever listened to the radio via the internet, compared with 16.9 million people in May ‘09. This includes 16.2 million listening live and 13.9 million listening at a later time using Listen Again services.”
Listen Again = BBC Radio 4 online, we presume. In addition, over 8 million adults “have heard of WiFi radio” (a dedicated Internet radio device) “but just under a million adults claim to own one.”
“Personalised Online Radio” listening is up too (Pandora; Last.fm). From 3.9 million to 4.5 million since May 2009, Rajar says. And there’s research on podcasts:
“8.1 million people have downloaded a podcast (up from 7.8 million in May ’09), while 4.4 million say they listen to podcasts at least once a week (up from 4.2 million in May ‘09). However, only 24% find time to listen to all the podcasts they download.”
Apparently Rajar takes this last assertion at face value, rather than suggesting that the survey group merely claimed it. RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research Limited and was set up in 1992 to do audience tracking for the BCC and commercial stations.
