Beeb celebrate BBC Sounds reach

New figures show how listeners were consuming the BBC’s audio content in the first quarter of 2024 as audience habits evolve…

Between January and March 2024, BBC Sounds saw another record quarter with a weekly audience of 4.97 million users across the app, website and voice activated devices, and for the first time, a peak of 5.1m.

The start of this year welcomed popular new podcast releases including The Traitors: Uncloaked, plus the return of fan-favourites, Things Fell Apart with Jon Ronson, Michael Mosley’s Just One Thing and Young Again with Kirsty Young.

Charlotte Moore, BBC Chief Content Officer:

“Whilst listening habits continue to evolve, the latest quarterly figures demonstrate the power of breakfast radio, bringing people together in all four corners of the UK, with more listeners choosing to start their day with music from across the BBC’s radio networks.

“We want to offer audiences more choice and help them discover distinctive, high quality audio content from the BBC whenever they want to, and I’m delighted to see continued growth of BBC Sounds which has achieved a record 643 million plays of all content across radio, podcasts and music mixes. BBC Sounds has peaked at over 5 million users for the first time this quarter, which is a fantastic achievement for the platform in its 5th year. Our speech networks continue to provide listeners with top quality on-demand programming and podcasts.”

BBC Radio 1 – Greg James

The RAJAR figures for the same period, Q1 2024, highlight 31.3m people tuning in each week for live output across the corporation’s stations, with a share of 43.4% of all radio listening in the UK.

The Beeb’s music stations got people going in the mornings according to RAJARs, BBC Radio 1 had 8.2m listeners aged 10+ and the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Greg James (Mon-Fri) had 4.4m 10+ listeners while BBC Radio 2 had 13.2m listeners with 6.6m tuning in for The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, continuing to be the UK’s most listened to Breakfast Show.

BBC Radio 3 had 2m listeners while BBC Radio 4 had 9.2m listeners with 5.7m tuning in for The Today programme (Mon-Sat) and BBC Radio 5 Live posted a reach of 4.9m listeners.

BBC Radio 1Xtra had 786k listeners, BBC Radio 4 Extra had 1.5m, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra had 971k, and BBC Asian Network had 542k.

BBC Radio 6 Music reached 2.5m listeners and continues to be the biggest digital-only music radio station in the UK. The BBC World Service was listened to by 1.2m people, and BBC Nations Radio and Local BBC Radio in England had a combined audience of 6.9m.

Over the past year, audiences grew for BBC Radio 3, BBC World Service and BBC Asian Network. There was also a strong quarterly increase in listeners for BBC Radio 1Xtra – which now broadcasts from Birmingham 10.00 – 16.00 each weekday – including for Radio 1Xtra Breakfast with Nadia Jae.

According to RAJAR, podcast listening is at an all-time high with twenty-one per-cent of the UK population (15+) now listening to podcasts each week.

Young Again with Kirsty Young can be heard on BBC Sounds