More than 2.8m listeners tuned in to BBC Radio 6 Music in the first quarter of the year (3 Jan to 3 April 2022) as the station celebrated its 20th birthday and brought listeners a stellar line up of performances from the 6 Music Festival in Cardiff.

The station had its highest quarter since the new RAJAR methodology began with 2.85m listeners and with 1.41m tuning in for its breakfast show with Lauren Laverne.

The RAJAR figures also continue to highlight how audiences value BBC Radio with 33.81m people tuning in each week for live output across the stations, with a share of 49.2%.

During the same quarter on BBC Sounds, there were a record number of number of plays – 179 million – of our podcasts and on-demand radio programmes, as well as 4.1 million plays of our music mixes. On third party platforms, there were 288 million downloads of BBC podcasts and on-demand radio programmes across the world.

Charlotte Moore, BBC Chief Content Officer, said: “How better to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the much loved BBC Radio 6 Music than with these figures! They really illustrate the unique place that the station has in its listeners’ lives, with its eclectic schedule and specialist, passionate DJs who day in day out champion music. Congratulations to everyone involved in making the station the success it continues to be!

“And what a way to mark the return of our live music festivals this year, as we emerge from the pandemic and look ahead to Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Coventry, an eight week season of the BBC Proms and Radio 2 Live in Leeds, bringing big acts and a wide range of performances to audiences across the UK.

“All our live stations provide millions of people with relevant, world class content so brilliantly, and we also continue to see BBC Sounds grow as listening habits evolve, particularly amongst younger audiences.”

According to RAJARs, BBC Radio 1 had 8.35m listeners aged 10+ and the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Greg James (Mon-Fri) had 4.34m 10+ listeners.

BBC Radio 2 had 14.58m listeners with 7.35m tuning in for The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.

BBC Radio 3 had 2.1m listeners.

BBC Radio 4 had 10.6m listeners with 6.72m tuning in for The Today programme (Mon-Sat).

BBC Radio 5 Live posted a reach of 5.56m listeners.

BBC Radio 1Xtra had 749k listeners, BBC Radio 4 Extra had 1.97m, BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra had 807k, and BBC Asian Network had 505k.

The BBC World Service was listened to by 1.52m people, and BBC Nations radio and Local BBC Radio in England had a combined audience of 8.64m.

RAJAR was suspended from March 2020 after Coronavirus restrictions forced all face-to-face market research to be suspended. The revised approach, starting with Q3 2021 data, includes new ways to capture data, providing greater stability and security for the future. The new, revised approach sees the existing survey design adapted to broaden its data gathering sources with the inclusion of panellist and MediaCell technology for the first time, alongside face-to-face recruited respondents; capturing listening both from diaries and by means of audio matching technology on the respondents’ mobile devices. MediaCell is proprietary passive technology owned by Ipsos MORI which runs as an application on a smartphone. It identifies listening to radio stations by Audio Content Recognition (ACR) techniques.Q1 2022