Radio Classique accelerates on digital
While digital takes up a growing share of radio listening, Radio Classique (within the Les Echos-Le Parisien group ) unveiled this Thursday at a press conference a new application to surf on the transformation of uses.
Designed with the digital management of Les Echos and available from March 21, it aims both to retain current listeners, with easy access to live broadcasts, podcasts and the listener’s favorite programs, and to conquer new targets. , by improving mobile listening. All with a significantly better user experience than the current version.
For music lovers, the new application will highlight concert replays (a hundred are recorded each season) and a musical selection from the station’s specialists. Listeners will also find it easier to find the great voices on the air, such as the host of the morning Guillaume Durand, History specialist Franck Ferrand, and cellist Gautier Capuçon. Interactivity during the programs is reinforced, with the possibility of writing live to the hosts during a broadcast.
The promises of DAB+
“These figureheads are helping the transition to on-demand listening,” said Radio Classique CEO Bertrand Dermoncourt during the press conference. The proof: the history program “Franck Ferrand tells” is the sixth most podcasted in France. In 2022, the station, currently the sixth most listened to on-demand French radio station, totaled 3.2 million monthly streaming listens, 15% more than the previous year. But its digital audience share still represents only 20% of its total listening.
To accelerate, Radio Classique, which with a hundred hertzian antennas is mainly present in FM in the big cities, counts a lot on the terrestrial digital radio network, or DAB +, which will allow it to widen its coverage, with in rewards better sound quality.
Already present on the axes in the south-east and east of the country, the station should be accessible by the end of the year on the main highways in the south-west, west, Brittany and north. “We can hope for a changeover in usage from FM to DAB+ within 5 years,” explained Bertrand Dermoncourt. A promising lever for the station, restrained so far by the scarcity of hertzian antennas.
Expand the audience
These new developments should allow Radio Classique – which had a total audience share of 1.5% during the last Médiamétrie survey, for the months of November and December 2022 – to increase the number of its listeners (currently the vast majority of CSP + of large cities) and to support the gradual switchover from terrestrial to digital listening.
While music radio stations are suffering from head-on competition with streaming platforms, which is hampering their online development, Radio Classique has assets to promote, thanks to its positioning which adds information to music – particularly economic -, history and culture. “Being not only musical gives us a special place in the digital market”, underlined Bertrand Dermoncourt.
Classical music, a genre poorly promoted on most major streaming services, is also an opportunity in the digital world, as evidenced by Apple’s announcement of the upcoming launch of a dedicated application, Apple Music Classic.
