A couple of weeks after the regular RAJAR release, and we now have the most recent MIDAS release from RAJAR.

First, a reminder that this uses a different methodology to the regular RAJAR release, based on a sample of 1,538 former RAJAR diarists who completed a 7-day online diary.

96% of the population consume some kind of audio (that is not visualised) each week.

Breaking this out by different forms of audio, we see that Live Radio is the biggest at 86% listening each week. That’s followed by 39% saying On Demand Music and 26% saying Podcasts.

As the chart shows, there are variances depending on the age-group. For example, 74% of 15-24s listen to Live Radio while 57% of 15-24s listen to On Demand Music. The skew is in the other direction with the 55+ age group.

It’s interesting to look at some of these figures over time.

Note that I’ve only looked at three types of audio here, because RAJAR has changed some of the other types of audio over time, and these are probably the three most relevant to compare.

Obviously, while Radio has fallen a little, there has been significant growth in On Demand Music listening even over the past three years.

RAJAR defines ‘Connected Audio’ as audio that requires internet connectivity — be it listening to live radio via a smart speaker, listening to podcasts or streaming music on Spotify.

There is clear growth over time, both in the number of people listening, and to a large extent, the amount of listening they do. The slight fall in average hours this quarter feels like it might be an outlier, and will be worth looking at again next quarter.

The research also measures of the Share of Audio Listening by Age which is different to the reach above as it’s the actual amount of time spent listening to each type of audio. Notably, in the 15-24 age group, more time is spent listening to On Demand Music than to Live Radio, even though more people listen to Live Radio in this age group. Radio remains the largest part of the audio landscape for every other age group.

That said, looking back to the Winter 2024 release, in this same age group the numbers were 52% On Demand Music and 32% Live Radio. In retrospect, this feels like an outlier result. The overall trend displayed here feels more likely.

The research shows that On Demand Music listening is still very much something consumed At Home, and primarily it’s a solitary activity.

Looking specifically at Podcasts the research shows that 26% of the population listen in an average week for a total of 7.4 hours per person. 82% of the time listening to podcasts is spent alone.

The survey suggest that:

• 66% of podcast listeners listen to 1-3 episodes a week
• 27% of podcast listeners listen to 4-10 episodes a week
• 8% of podcast listeners listen to 11+ episodes a week

Meanwhile 14% of podcast listeners say that they watch podcasts weekly.

Finally, here is listening against Time of Day. The breakfast peak for Live Radio remains 8:00-8:30am, but that’s also the peak for listening to Podcasts and listening to Catch-Up Radio. The peak for listening to On-Demand Music is from 2:00-2:30pm, although I’d note that it only just peaks then, and listening throughout daytime hours is strong. And post 10:00pm or so, everything is pretty close.

There are more findings in the full report.

Source: RAJAR/MIDAS Winter 2025

MIDAS Winter 2025 fieldwork was carried out over two weeks in late November/early December 2025 with a final sample of 1,538 former RAJAR participants aged 15+ who completed a 7-day online diary.