Radio: Still The World's Biggest New Music Platform

New analysis from Radio Monitor shows that radio is the biggest music platform in the world and that more hit music is heard on radio than on every other music platform combined. In Europe radio generates at least 5 times the exposure of Spotify. This rises to 48 times in countries like Nigeria where streaming take up is more limited.

Spotify’s most streamed song of 2024 was Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter with 1.6 billion streams on Spotify globally. (source Spotify wrapped 2024)

The same song was heard over 1.3 billion times in 2024 just on radio in the UK. (source Radiomonitor 2024 UK radio chart)

Spotify’s second most streamed song in 2024 was Beautiful Things by Benson Boone.

This graph shows UK Spotify daily streams vs UK radio daily listens over 2024. Beautiful Things had a total of 120 million streams on Spotify UK in 2024 and was heard 1.8 billion times on UK radio over the same period. That’s a multiple of 15.

Weekly chart benchmark

For a broader and perhaps more useful comparison Radiomonitor took the stream numbers for each entry in the latest Spotify UK weekly chart and put them side by side with each entry in the latest Radiomonitor weekly radio chart. (week 6, 2025)

The biggest Spotify track had 3.6 million streams, while the biggest radio track was heard 51.4 million times.

Lola Young – Messy topped both charts with radio providing a multiple of 14 (or 14 times the exposure of Spotify).

An average(median) of this multiple across the entire top 200 creates a very useful benchmark for comparing radio to Spotify in different countries. For the UK, this Radio Multiple (RM) is 10.

This means that the average track in the radio top 200 will be heard 10 times more often on radio than the average track in the Spotify top 200 will be streamed. In effect, the exposure that radio provides will, on average, be 10 times that of Spotify.

Spotify only make their top 200 chart publicly available, so it’s hard to judge what happens further along.

As position 200 in this chart is equivalent to radio position 2,955 in terms of streams/listens, we can say that radio outperformed Spotify in the UK for at least the top 2,954 titles.

Australian & Global Comparison

In every country where Radiomonitor operates these graphs look the same. Radio outperforms Spotify and every other platform in delivering hit music. The Radio Multiple (RM) is shown for each country for comparison.

Spotify, with a European market share of 56% (source Apple) is bigger there than all other companies combined. Globally Spotify has a 32% share, twice its nearest rival.

A Radio Multiple (RM) of 2 in Europe or 3 worldwide would make radio bigger than all music streaming platforms combined. Every country we have looked at has an RM of at least 5. In countries with a lower uptake of streaming platforms, like South Africa or Nigeria, this rises to 31 and 48 respectively.

Australia’s RM of five shows its relative maturity as a streaming market, on par with the European countries monitored. With last week’s Radio Monitor #1 showing around 26 million impressions, the impact and reach of radio is substantially higher than that of streaming. Of course with Australia’s 1% cap, that reach will not result in higher revenue than that generated, however the promotional impact on hit songs dwarfs that of radio.

Conclusion

Radio outperforms Spotify by some margin in every country in delivering exposure to hit music. No other platform comes close to the exposure that radio provides.

This analysis does not consider the goodwill that radio’s special relationship with its listeners brings or the context that presenters provide each time they play a song or interview an artist or talk about an upcoming concert.

The huge exposure that radio creates drives streams, downloads, physical and perhaps most importantly for artists in 2025, ticket sales. In a world where live music revenue is a much larger source of income than recorded music, that exposure matters more than ever.

(2023 UK £1.4 billion recorded vs £6.1 billion live music revenue. Source BPI and Live Music respectively)

Whether one person listening to a song on radio can be directly equated to one stream on a music platform could be open for further analysis. There is, however, one thing that can be said with absolute certainty.

A number 1 in the Radio Monitor airplay chart means that that song is the most listened to song, the biggest song, in all settings and across all platforms combined.

Rosé, in the UK today, that’s you and Bruno.

Teni, in Nigeria today, that’s you. (We have Money on at full volume in the office BTW)

Here in Australia and New Zealand, Gracie Abrams, that’s you.

This is your day. May there be many more.