SYDNEY�Beginning in 2009, many commercial radio stations, along with public broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and SBS (the Special Broadcasting Service) have been transmitting DAB+ signals around the five capital cities of Australia: Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. Because the majority of the population lives in and around the major cities, about 60 percent of the population is covered by DAB + transmissions, despite covering only 0.4 percent of the land surface of the continent. Over 3 million people in the five major cities now listen via DAB + radio, and 1.9 million DAB + radios have been sold. �
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Over 2 million of the listeners to DAB+ are listening to the digital version of existing analog stations, and over 1 million listen to stations only available via DAB+, according to radio.nl. The most popular DAB + station is Triple M Classic Rock, a spin-off from the pop-rock station Triple M in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. It attracts about 173,000 weekly listeners.
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Interestingly, the second-most popular DAB+ only station is Coles radio�a station designed to be used in the more than 750 supermarkets that Coles has in the Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. Listeners can also hear the station as they drive away from the store. Coles radio attracts about 140,000 listeners per week.
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The top five DAB + stations are rounded out by Pure Gold 80s (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide�131,000 listeners), the chill-out station known as Koffee (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne�103,000 listeners), and the urban/dance station The Edge Digital (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide�101,000 listeners).�