In the first ratings for the year, triple j performed well around the country.
The Hottest 100 was a big factor in that success, with millions of people engaging with the national youth station on air, online and through its apps.
Triple j’s web and social media numbers, made available to radioinfo, show the impact of the annual countdown on the station’s online and social media success.
The Hottest 100 website had 1,332,772 visits, up 9% on last year.
Social interaction was also huge, with Facebook engagement at 1,206,546, a 51% increase on last year.
Total sessions on triple j’s iOS and Android apps increased by 34% on last year, with 1,654,412 app sessions.
Nearly 2.1 million votes were cast by 298,851 voters, from 172 countries around the world. More than 16,000 songs were voted for.
Acting triple j Manager Meagan Loader has told radioinfo that all the key metrics saw significant increases year on year. “The most notable trend is the continued audience shift towards mobile.”
“There were also big jumps in engagement across key social platforms, again likely driven by an audience experiencing the broadcast via mobile.”
The recent survey, which included the Hottest 100 period, shows that triple j has 2,070,000 weekly listeners in the five cap cities.
“This is a new record for reach for triple j, hitting just over 2 million at the end of 2015. While the ratings are always up for the Hottest 100 period, we’ve found that the ratings continue to grow every year, in comparison to the same period the previous year. So we’re gaining new listeners in a peak period and keeping them,” says Loader.
In 2016, triple j plans to continue to focus on “telling the stories of young Australia, leading music conversations and connecting with our diverse, engaged audience 24/7 across all our platforms – radio, social media, online and video.”
Loader says the network will “celebrate the cultural impact” of 10 years of triplejunearthed.com and continue to nurture the newest addition to the triple j family, Double J.
In an election year, the station’s Hack team “will lead the connect between politicians, policies and young people, with in-depth conversations on the issues that matter most to 18-24 year olds,” according to Loader.
The success of triple j fits well into the ABC’s overall plan for 2016 by “connecting young audiences across the country to the ABC, opening the door to the world of news, information, entertainment and Australian stories that the ABC offers.”
Noticing that triple j had an acting manager, we also asked about the station’s regular manager Chris Scaddan. It turns out that Scaddan has been Acting Head of ABC Capital City Radio Group until recently, while Jeremy Millar has been working on some special projects within the ABC. See our other report on Local Radio priorities.
With the audience increasingly interacting with triple j on mobile, how does the triple j app work?
It is made by All In Media. A check of the AIM website shows that the triple j apps use ‘Rapid,’ which is a system for managing and publishing visual radio services.
According to the AIM website, “Rapid enables broadcasters to automatically gather content from a variety of sources including automation/playout and EPG systems, news and social media feeds, XML and RSS feeds, and more.”
At a recent radio conference presentation AIM presented figures from the previous year showing an astounding 38 terabytes of data were streamed through the triple j app on Australia Day, with peak streaming reaching 15 gigabits per second. The total number of audio streams served that day was about 305,000, with two thirds of those being on mobile phones.
With the new LG Digital and FM radio smart phone coming into the Australian market this year, free to air reception may take some of the load off the mobile data network during peak events like the Hottest 100.
Disclosure: AIM also created our radioinfo app.