The imec.digimeter, the annual independent look at global digitalization in Flanders, holds few surprises for radio and audio this time. But that is good news in this case, because radio continues to do well overall and according to this poll, almost half (48 percent) of Flemish people now have a DAB+ at home or in their car.
The 16th edition of the imec.digimeter, a realization of the research group for Media, Innovation and Communication Technology (imec-UGent) has just been published. This survey is the only fully independent survey in Flanders that also includes radio and audio. After all, other radio and audio research (including everything from CIM) is managed by the sectors involved themselves. So it always remains an interesting study to compare. The imec.digimeter research is of course much broader (including computers, smartphones, TV and video, gaming, news use, social media and digital economy), but as RadioVisie we limit our discussion to the radio and audio figures.
Radio continues to perform excellently as a medium: 80 percent listen at least weekly and 63 percent daily. This is a very stable figure for the fourth year in a row. There is even a revival among young people (18-24) this time, although it is of course mainly the large group 55+ that dominates radio listening. Three-quarters of elderly people have the radio on every day.
Radio listening also scores better among the middle and higher educated. Viewed by video profile – a new division in this imec.digimeter – the ‘classic TV viewer’ in particular is also a very loyal radio listener (74 percent daily + 9 percent weekly). In contrast, the ‘self-determining streamer’ has the lowest daily radio listening (40 percent daily + 23 percent weekly).
In the question ‘on which devices do you listen to the radio at least once a month?’ Both the FM receiver (from 42 to 60 percent) and the DAB+ receiver (from 34 to 48 percent) have made a significant leap forward compared to last year. However, at the asterisk at the bottom there is the comment “compared to last year, the “car radio” option has been omitted, which may explain the big jump in “radio device (FM)” and “DAB+”. That makes objective comparison rather difficult, although a total reach of 48 percent for DAB+ is in any case the best score ever for Flanders. Among middle and higher educated people – i.e. people who can often enjoy a more recent company car – the use of DAB+ has already risen to 52 and 55 percent respectively. Although for the sake of clarity, these are only reach figures and therefore not market shares.
Device18-2425-3435-4445-5455-6465-7475+TotalComputer1819172119121018Smartphone2734353125211428Tablet24357965FM-Radiotoestel6857575662637360DAB+2944555649483848Tv-toestel1619242524242322Smartspeaker7912109419
The listening range of radio via the smartphone increases slightly (28 percent), while it remains stable via the computer and TV, decreases via the smart speaker and is gradually negligible via the tablet. The – albeit indirect – but logical conclusion here is that for radio in Flanders, terrestrial equipment continues to have clear consumer preference.
When asked ‘sources for streaming music’, Spotify (52 percent) and YouTube (50 percent) are again neck and neck, but in the latter unfortunately no distinction is made between the video service and the music service YouTube Music, which is an essential difference. is. In this category, the other streaming services only play a marginal role. One in three states that they pay for a music streaming service. This turns out to mainly be Spotify, accounting for 33 percent, which probably means that just over 60 percent of Spotify users have a paying subscription. At the most recent CIM Audio Time that figure even exceeded 70 percent, but Spotify itself never provides figures per country for the number of paying music streamers.
The podcast remains a difficult category to assess objectively. “The podcast continues its rise in Flanders“, according to Imec’s own conclusions, but you can rather compare that advance with that of the Russians in Ukraine. The fact that 92 percent of Flemish people now know what a podcast is cannot be called relevant at all. You have been bombarded with advertisements for podcasts for years on radio, TV and in all news media. It would be very bad if the term had not yet caught on.
The most striking thing, however, remains that – in addition to the 8 percent who do not know what it is – 67 percent of Flemish people ‘rarely or never’ listen to a podcast (71 percent last year). While these are people who do know what it is and also have access to it. Only 4 percent are daily users, 12 percent listen weekly and another 10 percent monthly, although these figures are always slightly higher in the 18-54 group and among the highly educated. Nevertheless, the podcast as a way of spending the time of the Flemish population remains an exaggerated peripheral phenomenon and therefore continues to struggle with the commercial viability of this ‘phenomenon’.
About the Imec research:
The dataset contains 2835 respondents, collected in the autumn of 2023. The full methodology can be found in the tabular report.
More about the imec.digimeter:
2024-03-06 05:00:00
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