Radio 1 Dance and Anthems: the BBC’s spin-offs have never been so popular

One year after launching on DAB+, the two spin-off stations from BBC Radio 1 have reached their highest-ever figures in the RAJAR figures published on 29 October.

Radio 1 Dance now attracts 645,000 listeners per week, compared with 437,000 in the survey at the start of the year. Radio 1 Anthems has risen from 417,000 to 630,000. Both stations have shown growth in every survey since they were first included in the measurement. Listening time figures are as follows: 2.6 million hours per week for Dance, 2.4 million for Anthems, representing an increase of around 50 per cent over the period.

Whilst Radio 1’s main station has seen a slight decline, from 7.03 to 6.96 million listeners, its two sister stations have enabled the Radio 1 brand as a whole to rise to 7.59 million listeners. The difference of 623,000 people corresponds to listeners reached by Dance or Anthems without listening to Radio 1. At the start of the year, this figure stood at just 383,000.

As for the competition, Radio 1 Anthems (630,000) is already hot on the heels of Capital Anthems (688,000), its counterpart at Global.