CRA partners with Google to make Australian stations easily discoverable on Nest devices
Commercial Radio Australia (CRA), the body representing the commercial radio industry, has announced a partnership with Google which enable Australian stations to be found and streamed on Google Nest devices.
More than 300 Australian AM, FM and DAB+ stations will now be easily discoverable on devices including Nest Home, Nest Mini, Nest Max and Nest Hub Max via voice command.
CRA has announced a partnership with Google which will see Australian radio channels easily discoverable on Nest devices
CRA CEO Joan Warner said Google Australia was keen to partner with the radio industry on the initiative.
“The Australian radio industry is delighted to have entered this partnership with Google to ensure our live and local content is easily discoverable and accessible on Google Nest devices,” said Warner.
“Google Australia has shown an openness and willingness to work closely with us as an industry to ensure consumers have the best radio experience with their voice-assisted devices.”
Director of Google Australia and New Zealand, Mel Silva, said the move will expand the way listeners can consume radio.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Commercial Radio Australia to bring Aussies more ways to enjoy local radio stations on Google Nest devices,” said Silva.
“We hope this makes it easier for people to tune in, discover and follow their favourite Aussie stations with a simple voice command.”
The agreement includes joint marketing activities to promote easy reliable access to local radio on Google Nest devices. According to the Infinite Dial Australia 2019 research, 13% of Australians own a smart speaker.
Alongside the Google partnership, announced at the Radio Alive conference was the results of the 2019 Share of Audio study, which showed Australians spend more than seven minutes extra every day listening to audio entertainment than they did last year.
According to the study from GfK, radio is still the dominant audio format, while podcasts overtook owned music for the first time in the survey’s four-year history.
GfK Australian Share of Audio 2019 [Click to enlarge]
“We’ve seen an overall resurgence of audio with radio staying dominant and podcast listening enjoying a big jump. For the first time in history, consumers are spending more time listening to podcasts than to their own music collections,” said Warner.
Podcast listeners are most likely to be under 40, managers and professionals, and parents with children under 17. Time spent listening to podcasts rose to an average of 15 minutes per day from seven minutes a year ago. CRA also announced at the conference it would be releasing the first Australian Podcast Ranker which lists the top 100 podcasts monthly.
Radio continued to perform strongly despite the increase in listening choices, with Australians spending on average 2 hours and seven minutes per day listening, up two minutes from last year and little changed since the first survey in 2016.
Music streaming was also relatively steady at 31 minutes a day compared to 30 minutes a year ago.
The 2019 Share of Audio study was conducted by GfK Research with a nationally-representative sample of 1,998 respondents aged 10+.
