Rajar’s figures that came out in the beginning of February shows that 90% or approximately 48.9 million of the adult population (15+) is tuning in to their favourite radio station each week, which is an increase of 178.000 adults compared to the same time last year.

Some regional and local stations are also experiencing an increase in listeners like Cool FM in Northern Ireland, that has a weekly reach of 503.000 listeners, which is their biggest reach ever and Radio City 2 who is back at the same number of listeners they reached a year ago after a mid year drop.

Ofcom has even awarded radio licenses to 6 new community radios that will broadcast from Banbridge in County Down, Northern Ireland; Paisley in Renfrewshire, Scotland; Aberystwyth in Ceredigion, Wales; Burgess Hill in West Sussex; and South Dartmoor and Torbay in Devon

On a national level the figures are astonishing. BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 accumulated more than 9.8 and 15.4 million listeners respectively, which is some of their biggest audiences ever. Furthermore, networks like Global and The Kiss Network experienced an increase in listeners of more than 5%

In a world where streaming devices like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, etc. grow with enormous haste, the figures show that the previous expectations about streaming affecting the radio audiences are completely wrong. Instead people in the UK are actually spending more time listening to radio stations, which could be explained by the responsibility of playing and embracing UK artists, the BBC have. People in the UK seem to enjoy listening to their own artists instead of the global hits that the streaming devices provide. Also, the radio stations we know in the UK focus so much on the smaller indie artists and introduce us to them all the time, which is something that speaks to the general brit.

We are so excited to witness the growth of radio and the exposure of British music which we all love!