Two recent audience surveys indicate that the uptake of DAB digital radio is hotting up.
In the United Kingdom, the latest RAJAR report, covering the first quarter of 2009, found that a third of the population tunes to radio via a digital platform at least once per week. In Denmark, figures from Danmarks Statistik show that nearly one in three Danish households has a DAB radio.
RAJAR found that DAB share of listening was at 12.7 percent with a further 3.4 percent share attributed to listening via DTV and 2.2 percent via the Internet. In total, 20.1 percent of all radio listening is now via a digital platform, up from 17.8 percent during the same time period last year. Digital listening hours reached 206 million for the survey period.
DAB set ownership also increased during the quarter with 32.1 percent of those over the age of 15 claiming to live in a household with a DAB receiver.
Using a mobile phone to listen to radio is also increasing in the United Kingdom, particularly among 15- to 24-year-olds. Among that age bracket, 30.6 percent of respondents used their phone as a radio receiver, with 15 percent saying they did so at least once a week.
RAJAR also found that radio listening (across all platforms) reached an all-time high in the first quarter of 2009 with 45.8 million listeners per week. That is 90.2 percent of the U.K. population over the of 15 years.
In Denmark, the Danish statistics office’s 2009 durable goods report [PDF] found that 29 percent of Danish households had a DAB radio, up from 25 percent in the 2008 report. By comparison 53 percent of households had a digital television set in 2009.
