Originally posted on UK Radioplayer’s Blog
One of the fastest-growing ways of listening to internet radio is on mobile phones and tablets. At Radioplayer, we launched our own mobile app in October 2012 for Android and iPhone; and in September 2013 we launched a tablet app for iPad, Android and the Kindle fire. We also launched an app for Windows Phone just before Christmas.
The Radioplayer apps are designed to make it easy to discover new radio stations. Our innovative “Recommended” feature suggests radio stations and programmes for you – depending on where you are in the UK, what stations are trending, what else you’ve listened to, and even the type of music you like.
Now that the iOS and Android apps have been in use for some time (more than a million people have installed them), we’ve been able to drill into the data, and find out how people are using them. In particular: are people using the Radioplayer app to discover more stations? In the spirit of openness and collaboration, here’s some of what we’ve learnt.
Typically in the UK we listen to less radio over the weekend than during the week; so you’d expect the Radioplayer app to show similar behaviour. We certainly wake up a couple of hours later over the weekend, according to our app figures; but Radioplayer app listening is, unusually, just as high over the weekend as it is during the week.
In fact, the peak weekend time for the Radioplayer apps is 3pm on Saturday (coinciding with football kick-offs). This is one place where the search engine in the Radioplayer app is useful – letting football fans know which radio stations have match coverage. The second highest peak over the weekend is 4.00pm on Sunday afternoon – which coincides with the start of the chart, as well as more afternoon kick-offs in the Premier League.
During the week, the Radioplayer app has the effect of lengthening the ‘radio day’ – being used earlier in the morning, and later in the evening, than typical radio listening patterns suggest. This is good news, as it means we’re helping people stay with radio for longer.
You might guess that the Radioplayer app is used mostly on-the-move; but, it turns out, two-thirds of Radioplayer listening is done on a wi-fi connection, rather than using 3G. This sounds a little counter-intuitive for a mobile app, but it shows that Radioplayer is often used instead of a radio – perhaps, in a room in the house which doesn’t have a radio in it (like many peoples’ front rooms).
But what of the central question – does the Radioplayer app help people discover more UK radio stations? The answer is a resounding YES.
In our tablet app, listeners sample an average of 4.6 stations a week, far more than the typical radio listener (for analogue-only listeners this figure is just 2.1, according to RAJAR). So, with the Radioplayer app, people are discovering more radio stations – just as we hoped would happen.
