Commercial radio driving music sales

Radio continues to be the biggest driver for both discovering new music and stimulating music purchases in the digital age, according to research from RadioCentre, the commercial radio industry body.

A total of 56% of respondents said they discover new music mostly from the radio, three times as many as the 17% who cite the internet. Only 13% said that TV was their main source.

Meanwhile, 71% of respondents also said that radio introduced them to an artist they would not have heard elsewhere, while 68% of respondents said that hearing music on the radio influenced them to go out and purchase it, compared to 24% for the internet and 22% for TV.

The internet and radio were shown to be working together in driving the purchase of music, with 57% of people researched saying they have downloaded a song as soon as they’ve heard it on the radio.

Forty-five per cent said they have researched a song on a site like MySpace before buying, while 44% said they have gone to a radio station’s website to find the name of a song playing there and then.

The research was unveiled at the Radio Festival in Glasgow and was carried out during April across six UK cities.