Same song again?
Dutch radio in numbers: plays, records, facts and unique statistics
Last updated:
I’m a radio freak. Whenever I sit down at my MacBook, a station is on: , , or , depending on my mood and on how many times I’ve already heard the same line that morning. And that’s exactly where it chafes: however often I switch stations, somewhere in the past week ‘that song’ came by again.
So I started counting. Every five minutes a little script on my own server checks what 28 Dutch stations are playing, and this page shows what comes out: which artist comes by most often, which song you can hardly bear to hear any more, and which station still dares to vary. Spoiler: it’s not always the station you’d expect. (My favourites come out surprisingly well, by the way. Pure coincidence, of course.)
All figures come from my own measurements, so if something is off, you know who to blame. Click a station, artist or song for some background (for a station, with a link to listen live). Almost all links open a popup, so you stay right on this page. And yes, there’s a corner for Chris Rea too.
The scoreboard
Top 10 artists
Top 10 songs
Charts
Plays per day
When is radio busiest?
How often does the same song come back?
All stations
Regional stations
Besides the national stations there is radio from your own area. They are not in my counts, because the source I use only follows national stations. So here is one card per station, starting with the stations in my own region. Together, the thirteen regional broadcasters reach about 1.9 million listeners a week, according to Ster.
In my region
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Regional broadcaster
Radio West
The regional station of Omroep West, for 27 municipalities in the north of South Holland, from The Hague and Leiden to Gouda, Alphen aan den Rijn and Nieuwkoop.
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Local broadcaster, Nieuwkoop
NEO Radio
Local news and sport from Nieuwkoop and surroundings, with plenty of amateur football.
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Local public broadcaster
RTV Hollands Midden
“Het Hollandse Hart van de Regio” (the Dutch heart of the region): the local public broadcaster for Nieuwkoop and surroundings, with Radio Hollands Midden and the Sterrenshow.
Source: public information from the stations themselves and Wikipedia, as of 1 November 2026. If you spot something that is wrong, let me know.
Records and oddities
Who plays the oldest song, who has the most names and how quickly does a song come back? I look up years, birth dates and band names in MusicBrainz and Wikidata; click an underlined name for more.
Music per decade
The clown corner
Statistics nobody asked for, but that I wanted to know anyway.
Chris is driving home again
Chris Rea (1951–2025)
The radio in brief
A text version of the main figures, updated on November 3, 2026. Over the last 30 days the Dutch radio stations we follow played 265,898 plays in total: 23,951 different songs by 10,775 different artists.
Most played artists (30 days)
- Alex Warren2,369 plays
- Teddy Swims2,276 plays
- Sombr2,091 plays
- The Bausa1,958 plays
- Son Mieux1,769 plays
- Taylor Swift1,666 plays
- Bruno Mars1,583 plays
- Sienna Spiro1,426 plays
- Katseye1,424 plays
- Lost Frequencies1,391 plays
Most played songs (30 days)
- Magnetic – The Bausaon 16 stations1,958 plays
- Mr. Know It All – Teddy Swimson 13 stations1,585 plays
- Animal – Katseyeon 15 stations1,406 plays
- My Body Isn`t Ready – Sombron 13 stations1,398 plays
- Choosin' Texas – Ella Langleyon 13 stations1,360 plays
- Great Expectation – Sienna Spiroon 13 stations1,264 plays
- Kingdom Of Fear – Cameron Whitcombon 13 stations1,240 plays
- Edge of desire – Jonas Blue and Maliveon 11 stations1,220 plays
- Babydoll – Jamie Milleron 16 stations1,212 plays
- Feels, Pt. 2 – Son Mieuxon 13 stations1,189 plays
Fastest repeat: ‘Pilé’ by Mauvais Djo came back on FunX after 15:01 minutes (July 31, 2026). Most stations in one hour: ‘Magnetic’ by The Bausa was played on 8 different stations within one clock hour (September 1, 2026). Busiest day so far: November 2, 2026 with 9,854 plays. Since the measurement started on July 4, 2026, 890,924 plays have been counted in total.
Click an artist or song in the figures above for more details.
How does this work?
Every five minutes a script on my own server checks which songs the Dutch stations have just played and adds them up. Every ten minutes that produces a file with the figures, which this page reads. A play is one time a station plays a song. A different song counts only once, however often it comes back.
Repetition is the average number of times a song comes back in the chosen period: the number of plays divided by the number of different songs. The lower the number, the more variety a station plays. Stations with fewer than seven days of data and talk stations are left out of the rankings.
The figures come from my own measurements and may differ from the stations’ official playlists. The market share per station (audience 13+, September 2026) comes from the NMO Listening Survey, as published by Marketing Report. Information about stations is compiled from public sources and may be out of date.