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Music Mix & Personalities: Now the Main Drivers to Listen to Radio

BPR’s latest study on the All-Audio listening landscape, has revealed the main reasons why listeners have been tuning into radio in recent times, and has also discovered exactly which app is currently dominating the music streaming world.

The study conducted by BPR late last year, focused on the listening habits of people from a wide range of regions and demographics, returned some fascinating results.

4500 surveys were conducted in September 2022. The study was conducted with 18-54 Men & Women, filtered by those who had listened to some form of audio in the past week.

The BPR All Audio Survey is a global study, based on 500 respondents from 9 different major international cities to provide both a wider perspective on the trends in audio listening and comparisons of different markets and cultures across mainly ‘western’ markets. The combined  results of all 9 markets is used as the total in this report. The cities surveyed are:

• London, United Kingdom
• Berlin, Germany
• Paris, France
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Stockholm, Sweden
• Madrid, Spain
• Sydney, Australia
• Los Angeles, USA
• New York, USA

Even in this music streaming era, Radio’s music mix remains one of the main reasons to listen to the platform for much of its audience.

While Streaming offers a similar product, surprisingly this has not replaced or even diluted the radio listener’s interest in the music on offer from radio stations.

The second most nominated listening motivator are Hosts & Presenters, in combination the mix of Hosts together with the mix of music and personalities together accounts for almost one third of the total.

Radio’s strength continues to be its versatility together with ease of use compared to both streaming and podcasts.

The benefits of a curated music programme are clearly part of Radio’s USP, combining ‘music I know and like’ together with presenters who provide company, information or entertainment.

While at the other end of the audio listening spectrum, BPR’s latest study also revealed, perhaps unsurprisingly, that Spotify still heavily dominates Music Streaming choice.

Internationally, Spotify has the largest user base of any of the music streaming services, with none of its competitors coming close to matching it. YouTube, Amazon & Apple Music all have the next highest subscription rates, but it is clear Spotify is the leader overall.

The All Audio Survey confirms that while younger listeners are more likely to choose streaming as their main audio source, as Audio choices continue to expand with more and more sophisticated alternatives, Radio still provides the cornerstone option for most.

Survey information provided by the BPR All-Audio Report 2022. Download the full report here