Mumbai: In any given week, 8.1 million people in the UK listen to radio via the Internet, either live or through a Listen Again service, and 1.87 million listen to a Podcast.
These were the summary findings of UK based radio monitor RAJAR which recently commissioned a piece of research on Podcasting And Radio Listening Via Internet Survey. The survey was conducted in September and October 2007 by Ipsos MORI using a sample of RAJAR respondents from the previous nine months who had claimed to listen to the radio via the Internet, or downloaded Podcasts.Almost 12 million people have claimed to listen to radio via the Internet, including 9.1 million listening live and 7.6 million who have used Listen Again services. In addition, 4.3 million have downloaded a Podcast.
The average user of Listen Again services listens to 1.88 programmes each week, while three quarters of Listen Again listeners say the service has no impact on the amount of live radio that they listen to; however, 13 per cent claim to now listen to more live radio while eight per cent say they listen to less. Almost half of Listen Again listeners said they are now listening to radio programmes that they didnt previously listen to as a result of the Listen Again service.
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The typical Podcast user subscribes to 3.16 Podcasts and spends 53.6 minutes per week listening to them. Comedy and music are the two favourite genres.
iTunes is the software of choice, used by two thirds of Podcast users to subscribe to Podcasts, while almost a quarter (23 per cent) simply download directly from the website via their browser. 80 per cent listen to Podcasts on their home computer, and 61 per cent listen using a portable audio/mp3 player.
Podcast listening occurs throughout the day, with an evening peak when 46 per cent of Podcast users tune in. 73 per cent listen to Podcasts that are more than a week old.
Podcasting appears to have a positive effect on live radio listening ?“ almost 18 per cent say they now listen to more live radio since they started downloading Podcasts while only eight per cent say they listen to less, and 31 per cent say they are now listening to radio programmes that they never used to listen to before thanks to Podcasts.
Thinking about how Podcasts may be funded in the future, there is some appetite among the Podcast community for Podcasts containing adverts if they were free as a result with 58 per cent saying they would be interested in downloading such content; however, only 28 per cent responded positively to the idea of Podcasts without adverts that had to be paid for.
The survey summarises that almost a quarter (23.7 per cent) of the UKs adult population (those aged 15 or over) have listened to radio via the Internet. That equates to nearly 12 million people (11,911,000).
Two thirds of these, or 16.1 per cent of the adult population, listen at least once a week, with 4.6 per cent listening via the Internet every day or most days ?“ thats 2.3 million people.
The vast majority of Internet radio listeners (91.5 per cent) listen at home; almost one in four listen at work (22.8 per cent) while 5.5 per cent listen elsewhere.
The study also tracked the use of Personalised Online Radio, an online service that uses a music recommendation system. Intelligent software selects music for listeners based on their personal likes and dislikes. Some of the better known examples are LastFM and Pandora. Asked if they were aware of such services, 30 per cent of Internet radio listeners (3.97 million) said that they were.
People who said they were aware of POR were asked how often they used it. Almost a quarter of a million people (247,000) use a POR service everyday, and nearly a million people are weekly users (973,000).
for 78 per cent of users, POR has not eroded their traditional radio listening, and only six per cent admitted that it had made a significant difference ?“ 2.8 per cent listening to much more and 3.2 per cent to much less.
When asked which media player software they use to organise music and/or audio on their PCs at home and at work, Windows Media Player came out well on top for home usage, being mentioned by 7.83 million users. The next most popular applications were iTunes (5.19 million) and RealPlayer (4.99 million).
At work, Windows Media Player was still the preferred software with 2.1 million users. RealPlayer was mentioned by 1.13m and iTunes by 0.75m.
the Apple iPod was the favourite portable mp3 or Digital Audio player, with 4.23 million users. The nearest competitor ?“ the Sony Walkman ?“ came in with 1.86 million.
Asked what types of Podcast they were interested in, more than 2.3 million opted for Comedy. Next came Music, TV and Film and News and Politics, all of which achieved over a million mentions.
