The radio It has been one of the discoveries with the greatest impact of the second industrial revolution, It has been with us for a century and has been able to renew itself with digital technology: almost 20% of listeners currently listen to it through the internet, in “streaming” or in format podcast, according to the latest data recorded by AIMC.
This is the most relevant of the data handled by the Association for Communication Media Research (AIMC), which produces the General Media Study (EGM), among others, and which suggests that currently almost 20% of the radio audience is through the internet live or delayeda growth that allows you to reach almost anywhere at this time.
These are the benefits that the digital age has brought, as the technical director of AIMC, José Andrés Gabardo, argues to EFE: medium wave has a very large coverage, but the number of repeaters allowed is very small because the radioelectric space is finite and cannot be increased, and the same thing happens with FM, although with the advantage of being able to include more information and better quality.
But also in this case, space is finite, whereas on the Internet, as he comments“you can put all the things you want and the main advantage is being able to have coverage over all the places where the network reaches”.
The medium ‘Internet radio’, moreover, It has the same programming as the airwaves, at least in the “streaming” part.which, according to Gabardo, “adds, unlike what happens to other media, magazines and even television.”
This addition of “streaming” and podcasts is making it possible for the number of radio listeners to be maintained and for this ‘new audience’ makes up for listeners who are now lost in traditional listening.
It is already difficult to see listeners with the transistor, walking down the street listening to the football game on Sundays. Every time, one could say, that you listen to the radio in a “cooler” way, through your mobile, with headphones, walking, but before leaving having selected what is going to be heard. The digital radio listener chooses more.
This ‘revolution’ that the radio is experiencing is confirmed by the data that the media research association has advanced to EFE and which are from February to November 2022:
– More than 52% of Spaniards over the age of thirteen listen to the radio, in absolute figures more than 22.3 million people, a figure practically equal to that of the same period of 2021.
– The way most used by the Spanish to hear it is through the waves, although in 2022 it has dropped slightly compared to 2021: last year, in the indicated section there were 19.25 million users (18.682 million for FM and 570,000 for AM) compared to 19.79 million in 2021 (19.21 for FM And 575,000 for AM).
– The second most followed way, and even at a distance, is the Internet, which with more than four million people (4.17) is undoubtedly the fastest growing, since from February to November 2021 3.19 million listened to it that way, that is, almost a million listeners have grown.
Listening to radio over the Internet continues to rise exponentially: listeners via live streaming add up to 2.86 million people from February to November 2022 (2.41 million in the 2021 stretch) and the deferred number of podcasts already exceeds 1.53 million compared to 951,000 people in 2021.
– The alternative of listening to the radio through DTT has dropped somewhat last year: 538,000 listeners compared to 699,000 in the 2021 section.
The radio lives another World Day this Monday and does it in a big way. Starting at noon, journalists Ângels Barceló from the SER, Carlos Herrera, from the COPE and Carlos Alsina, from zero wave, They will join their voices through their stations in a joint program, an initiative of the Spanish Association of Commercial Broadcasting to commemorate this event.
RNE It will also celebrate it live from the Moncloa Metro interchange, in Madrid, to bring radio closer to the public, which is what it is all about, as two masters of this excellent communication medium would say: “The radio only makes sense if it is useful” (Iñaki Gabilondo) and “if it went out, the citizens would not be able to stand it” (Luis del Olmo).