How to Track Your BBC Radio 2 Plays | TAP
Tracking Radio 2 results and reporting
By TAP Editorial Team
Quick answer
Radio 2 plays are confirmed from the programme page for each episode on bbc.co.uk, which lists every track aired with the broadcast date and time. The station also publishes a weekly new music playlist as an A, B and C list, with new additions in bold. There are no numbered playlist positions, and no audience figure is published for a single show.
Radio 2 moves slowly, which is the good news and the bad news. A record can sit on the playlist for weeks and generate a steady drip of plays you will never notice unless you are counting, and it can also take a month before anything happens at all. These templates give you a place to record what you can actually see: the tracklist on each programme page, the playlist published every week, and whatever people tell you. Kept for one release they are mildly useful. Kept across three they change how you plan.
Weekly Play Log
Recording what went out on Radio 2 in a given week, daytime and specialist kept apart
[ARTIST] | [TRACK] | WEEK OF [DATE] DAYTIME On the published playlist: [A LIST / B LIST / C LIST / NOT LISTED] New this week: [YES / NO] Plays I can confirm: [NUMBER] | Shows: [NAMES] SPECIALIST [SHOW] ([DAY AND TIME]): [NUMBER] plays [SHOW] ([DAY AND TIME]): [NUMBER] plays ANYTHING ELSE Said on air: [QUOTE OR NOTE] Other BBC stations this week: [WHERE] What I did in the week before these plays: [NOTE] NEXT WEEK [One or two named actions.]
Fill this in on the same day each week, Friday works well because the playlist page turns over weekly. Confirm plays from the programme page for each episode on bbc.co.uk, which lists every track played with the date and time it aired. Keep specialist plays separate from daytime, because they come from different decisions and mean different things.
Monthly Summary
Pulling four weeks together so you can see a shape rather than a scatter of individual plays
RADIO 2 SUMMARY | [ARTIST] | [TRACK] | [MONTH] WHERE IT GOT TO Playlist: [FIRST APPEARED ON DATE, WHICH LIST] or [NEVER LISTED] Weeks listed: [NUMBER] Moves between lists: [WHAT MOVED AND WHEN] Plays I can confirm: [NUMBER] Shows that played it more than once: [NAMES] WHAT ELSE MOVED IN THE SAME PERIOD Streams: [BEFORE] to [AFTER] Followers or mailing list: [BEFORE] to [AFTER] Tickets, records or merch sold: [NUMBER] Press: [WHAT AND WHERE] WHAT I THINK CAUSED WHAT [Two or three sentences. Be careful here. Radio play and a streaming rise in the same fortnight are not proof that one caused the other, and pretending otherwise will mislead you next time.]
Put a baseline in before the release rather than after, because a percentage rise with no starting number is meaningless and you will not remember the starting number in April. Radio 2 plays often keep going after the release conversation has moved on, so run this for at least two months rather than closing the file at four weeks.
Playlist Watch
Checking the published Radio 2 playlist week by week and noting what happens to your record
PLAYLIST WATCH | [ARTIST] | [TRACK] Week | Date checked | List | New or moved | Also on the page that week 1 | [DATE] | [A / B / C / not listed] | [BOLD = new, ITALIC = moved] | [Record of the Week, Album of the Week] 2 | [DATE] | [LIST] | [NEW / MOVED / SAME] | 3 | [DATE] | [LIST] | [NEW / MOVED / SAME] | 4 | [DATE] | [LIST] | [NEW / MOVED / SAME] | WHAT I CAN SAY FOR CERTAIN [One paragraph, using only what the page actually showed.]
The Radio 2 New Music Playlist page on bbc.co.uk lists A, B and C, with new additions in bold and anything that has moved in italics, plus a Record of the Week and an Album of the Week. There are no numbered positions and no ranking inside a list, so any tracker that asks you for a position out of forty is describing something that does not exist. Screenshot the page each week, because it is replaced rather than archived.
Specialist Show Brief
One page per specialist show you are working, kept across releases rather than per campaign
SHOW: [NAME] | Presenter: [NAME] | Slot: [DAY AND TIME] WHAT THEY PLAY [Three or four records they played recently that tell you the taste of the show.] MY HISTORY WITH THEM First contact: [DATE, HOW] Ever replied: [YES / NO, WHEN] Ever played me: [DATES AND TRACKS] Session or interview: [YES / NO] THIS RELEASE Sent: [DATE, WHICH TRACK, WHICH ROUTE] Played: [DATES] Said anything: [WHAT] HONEST ASSESSMENT [Is this a real relationship, a one-off, or wishful thinking. Write down which.]
Radio 2's specialist hours change name and presenter from time to time, so check bbc.co.uk/schedules and update the header before you rely on it. A steady presence on one evening show across two or three releases is worth more than a fortnight of daytime that nobody in your audience heard, because the specialist listener came for the music rather than for the traffic news.
The Plain-English Version
Explaining to a manager, bandmate, family member or anyone else outside radio what actually happened
[TRACK] ON RADIO 2, [DATE RANGE] WHAT WE WANTED [One sentence.] WHAT HAPPENED [Track] was on Radio 2's published playlist from [DATE] to [DATE], on the [A / B / C] list. I confirmed [NUMBER] plays across [NUMBER] shows, the strongest support coming from [SHOW]. WHY IT MATTERS [Radio 2 has the largest audience of any UK radio station, and its listeners skew older than Radio 1's. What that means for this particular record, in one or two sentences.] WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW [Say this part out loud. Total audience for a given play, why the record was chosen, whether it will stay. None of that is published.] NEXT [Two or three things, named.]
Write it for somebody who does not work in radio, and resist the temptation to convert plays into an audience figure you cannot support. If somebody wants reach numbers, RAJAR publishes UK listening figures by station, and that is the honest place to send them rather than a multiplication you did yourself.
What You Predicted Before You Sent It
Written before you pitch and sealed, so that afterwards you can tell whether you understood your own record
BEFORE I SEND | [ARTIST] | [TRACK] | [DATE] WHERE I THINK IT BELONGS Station: [WHY RADIO 2 RATHER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE] Daytime or specialist: [WHICH, AND WHY] Shows I am aiming at: [NAMES] WHAT I AM BASING THAT ON Records currently on the Radio 2 playlist that sit near mine: [NAMES] What I have behind me: [CHECKABLE FACTS] WHAT WOULD COUNT AS THIS WORKING [Be specific and be modest. One play on a named show is a real result for a first attempt.] WHAT I EXPECT TO GO WRONG [Write it down. You will be right more often than you think.]
Fill this in and do not look at it again until the release is over. Comparing it with what happened is the fastest way to find out whether you read your own record correctly, and it is far more useful than any general advice about what the station wants. Keep every one of them.
When Nothing Is Happening
Working out what to do when the record has not been picked up and the weeks are going past
DIAGNOSTIC | [ARTIST] | [TRACK] | [DATE] WHERE THINGS STAND Sent to: [WHO, WHEN, HOW] Replies: [NUMBER] Plays anywhere: [NUMBER] Weeks since release: [NUMBER] WHAT I ACTUALLY KNOW [Only things you can point at. Not what you assume happened.] MOST LIKELY EXPLANATIONS [Pick two or three] Wrong station for this record Right station, wrong show Right show, never actually reached them Right everything, wrong week The record is not there yet WHAT I AM CHANGING [One thing. Changing five things at once means learning nothing.] WHAT I AM STOPPING [Something. There is always something.]
Silence is the normal outcome and it is rarely a verdict on the song. The BBC does not explain its music decisions and nobody there owes you feedback, so build your own picture from where you sent it and what came back. The most common answer by a distance is that the track never reached a person who programmes music, which is a fixable problem rather than a judgement.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get listener figures for a particular Radio 2 show?
You cannot, at that level. RAJAR publishes UK radio listening figures by station and by broad daypart, and the BBC reports audience data at station level, but neither publishes an audience number for a single show at a single hour. Any per-show figure you have been shown was estimated by somebody, and multiplying plays by an invented number will only make your own record of the release less trustworthy.
Does the Radio 2 playlist have numbered positions?
No. The published playlist is three groups, an A list, a B list and a C list, with new additions in bold and anything that has changed in italics. There is no ranking inside a list and no position out of a total, so a track cannot move from thirty-one to nineteen. If a template asks you for a playlist position, it was written by somebody who had not looked at the page.
How often should I update whoever is helping me?
Weekly while something is actually moving, then monthly. Send it the same day each week so it becomes expected rather than an interruption, keep it under 200 words, and say plainly when a week produced nothing. A note that is upbeat every single week gets skimmed, and then the week that matters gets skimmed too.
How do I track plays without an industry monitoring service?
Use the programme pages. Every music episode on bbc.co.uk carries a Music Played list with artist, track and label, plus the broadcast date and time, and episodes stay on BBC Sounds for about a month. Check the handful of shows you are actually targeting rather than trying to watch the whole station, and record where each play came from as well as when it happened.
How do I tell whether a Radio 2 campaign is working or just producing numbers?
Ask what changed that you can name. A show came back to the record a second time, somebody wrote to you, a promoter mentioned hearing it, tickets moved in a city you had never played. Those are outcomes. A rising play count with nothing attached to it is worth logging but it is not yet worth celebrating, and telling the two apart is most of the skill.
From the field
Proof points
- Named contact reply rate vs studio@: 5x higher (Liberty Music PR campaign data, 2024-2026)
- Best UK send window: Tue/Wed 09:00-10:00 UK (Across 60+ campaigns)
- Optimal follow-up cadence: +7 days from initial pitch (Liberty internal data)
- Reply visibility blind spot: Stations add to rotation without replying (WARM monitoring vs email reply rate)
What actually happened
Eyes Glued, BBC Radio 6 Music: 153 plays across 6 weeks, accelerating in week 4. Track-led pitch with a single playable line. (March 2025)
Radio 2 is a longer game. The playlist meeting runs weeks ahead and the AOR audience does not move on a press hook. I send earlier, lead with the production credit if there is one, and accept that most pitches will not get a reply at all. The plays show up six weeks later and the producer never said yes in writing. WARM is the only honest scoreboard.
Chris Schofield, Radio plugger, Liberty Music PR
Related resources
Further reading
- TAP Blog — In-depth guides, comparisons and advice for independent artists running their own promotion.
- UK Music — The voice of the UK music industry, representing labels, publishers, and collecting societies.
- Music Week — Industry news, charts, and analysis for music professionals.
- The Music Network — Global music business intelligence and networking.
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