THE north's main radio stations added more than 100,000 listeners over the past year, according to industry measurement body Rajar.
The total audience share across the six most popular stations and groups in the north during October, November and December was up more than 6 per cent on the same period a year earlier.
The big winners were the commercial stations, with Downtown recording the highest increase of any station in the north.
Apart from the Q network (which comprises Q102 in Derry, Q97 in Coleraine, Q101 in Omagh, Newry and Mourne's Five FM, Six FM in Mid-Ulster and Ballymena-based Seven FM) and U105, every other local station's figures were up.
BBC Radio Ulster added 17,000 listeners on the same three-month period the year before, with a weekly audience of 524,000.
However, Downtown Radio was celebrating a stellar performance, adding 51,000 new weekly listeners to its audience (up to 318,000), which was more than any other commercial station in Northern Ireland.
Downtown, established 38 years ago, has continued to grow in recent years and sister-station Cool FM has also performed well, adding 12,000 new listeners. Combined, they now share an audience of 637,000 adults, meaning 44 per cent of the north's population tunes in to at least one of the two stations every week.
Managing director Mark Mahaffy said: "It's heartening to see such a healthy performance from local radio, with the year-on-year growth meaning almost nine in 10 adults in the north are tuning in to radio here every week."
"Our two market-leading stations, combined, are getting closer to one out of every two adults tuning in every week. Cool FM, the biggest commercial station locally, has just got bigger and reaches over twice the audience of our nearest competitor.
"And Downtown Radio has recorded the highest increase in listeners of any station, which rubber stamps its number two market position with over 123,000 more listeners than its nearest rival."
"The digital revolution is often presumptively credited with the demise of traditional media such as newspapers and radio, but these figures show one thing has remained unchanged for any publisher or broadcaster - that content is king."
U105, part of the UTV Media Group, was down slightly over the year but recorded an increase on the previous quarter.
Station manager Peter McVerry said: "The most pleasing aspect is these results are the amount of time people spend listening to U105, and in such a competitive market everyone at the station is delighted to know that listeners love our mix of great music, quality conversation and up-to- the-minute extensive news, sport and traffic."
Fergus Keeling, head of radio at BBC Northern Ireland, said: "We're delighted BBC Radio Ulster/Foyle remains the most listened to station. Our listeners continue to make us their first choice for high quality news programming and for our rich variety of speech radio and specialist music.
"As we move into BBC Radio Ulster's 39th year on air, we endeavour to provide listeners with programming that reflects their interests, passions and thirst for news."
Top local radio stations (weekly listeners) Q4 2013 v Q4 2012
Radio Ulster - 524,000 (up from 507,000)
Cool FM - 393,000 (up from 381,000)
Citybeat - 147,000 (up from 112,000)
Downtown - 318,000 (up from 267,000)
U105 - 195,000 (down from 200,000)
Q Radio Network - 110,000 (down from 115,000)