Global has launched Radio Plus, a paid tier of Global Player that strips the ad breaks out of Heart, Capital, Smooth, Classic FM and the rest of its music stations. The ads stay on FM, DAB and the free streams, but the listeners most willing to pay to avoid them are often the ones advertisers most want to reach.
What’s happened
On 23 September Global, the UK’s largest commercial radio group, announced Radio Plus, a subscription that removes commercial breaks from its music stations while keeping presenters, news, travel and competitions. Radio Plus costs £9.99 a month or £99.99 a year and covers live, Replay and Catch Up listening across all of Global’s UK music stations, plus ad-free catch-up from LBC and LBC News. A cheaper Brand Plus tier at £4.99 a month covers a single brand family, such as Heart and its decade and themed spin-offs, and an LBC Catch Up Plus tier at the same price removes ads from LBC catch-up only, with live output still carrying breaks. The subscriptions work through the Global Player app and website, Alexa speakers, connected-car apps and Apple TV. Global has been clear that Global Player itself stays free and that FM and DAB output is unchanged, with founder Ashley Tabor-King describing the offer as live radio “with more music and no commercial breaks”.
Why it matters to radio advertisers
The first point is proportion. The bulk of commercial radio listening still happens on FM and DAB, and every one of those listeners hears your spot exactly as before. Nobody should be pulling radio off a plan because of this. What changes is the streamed audience, and it changes in a particular way. The people who pay a tenner a month to skip ad breaks are heavy, loyal listeners with disposable income, which is uncomfortably close to a description of the audience a fine art auction house or a premium claims firm buys Classic FM or Smooth to reach. Subscription services in music and video have all followed the same path: the paying minority is small at first, but it is the most valuable slice of the audience, and it grows.
The second point is measurement. Rajar counts listening, not ad exposure, so a Radio Plus subscriber who listens to Heart for three hours a day still turns up in the station’s reach and hours figures. Unless the sales houses adjust for it, the audience a rate card is priced on will gradually include people who never hear a break. That is a fair question to put to Global now, before the first renewal conversations of 2027, and it is one we will be asking on our clients’ behalf: how will ad-free listening be reported, will traded audiences exclude subscribers, and what happens to sponsorship credits and presenter promotions, given that presenters, competitions and news all stay in for subscribers?
The third point is timing. Radio Plus lands as Q4 demand builds and late space on the big networks gets tighter. When a media owner launches something that shrinks the addressable audience, even at the margin, it is the right moment for buyers to ask for something in return, whether that is price protection, bonus airtime or a better position in the break. That negotiation is where we earn our fee: we go to Global, Bauer and the other sales houses each week with a clear price and a list of the stations and dayparts we want, and we use exactly this kind of change as leverage.
What we’d do
First, rebuild the plan at station level rather than treating “Global” as one line. Talk stations such as LBC keep their live ads under every tier, so news and speech inventory is unaffected and, for older, affluent audiences, arguably the better buy anyway. Second, split the streamed element out and make Global’s digital audio team prove it separately. If the addressable streaming audience is changing, we want it bought on its own terms, with impressions and frequency reported, rather than folded into a broadcast package. Third, keep sponsorship and promotions in the mix. If competition mentions and presenter reads reach subscribers when a 30-second spot cannot, that inventory just became more valuable relative to the break, and we would want to negotiate for it before the sales houses reprice it.
How VCM can help
We rebuild radio plans around who actually hears the ad, then negotiate the airtime late so you pay a great deal less for the same listeners. Take a look at how we buy radio advertising, then get in touch on 0333 577 1848 or at James@vcmweb.co.uk. Send us your current radio plan and we will talk it through with you and tell you what it should cost right now, no obligation.
