BBC Sounds delivered a strong start to the year, with speech, news and sport helping drive 718 million plays between January and March.
That total covers radio, podcasts and music and is up 5% on the same period last year.
The growth was led by titles including The Archers, which is marking its 75th anniversary, alongside The Traitors: Uncloaked, In Our Time, Newscast and Americast.
Across BBC platforms, including BBC Sport, BBC News, BBC Bitesize and visualised podcasts on iPlayer, audio content reached an average weekly audience of 5.8 million. The highest weekly figure was 7.2 million during the week of the final episode of The Traitors: Uncloaked in January.
BBC content was also widely consumed beyond its own platforms. Podcasts and on-demand radio shows were downloaded 231 million times on third-party apps during the quarter.
Social video clips from BBC audio generated 1.1 billion views between January and March, an increase of 21% year on year.
There were 265 million plays of on-demand radio and podcast content on BBC Sounds during the quarter, alongside 1.5 million plays of music mixes. The service also recorded 11 million signed-in accounts.
Mohit Bakaya, Controller of BBC Radio 4 and Director of BBC Speech Audio, said the figures showed audiences continuing to seek out “distinctive storytelling and shared cultural moments”.
Jonathan Wall, Director of BBC Sounds, said it was encouraging to see record audience numbers and younger listeners discovering programmes including Game’s Gone: The Steve Bracknell Podcast and MF Doom: Long Island to Leeds.
Among the quarter’s strongest performers, The Archers was the most popular on-demand radio programme overall, while Newscast was the most listened-to podcast across all adults and under-35s.
