Online Radio Reach Expanding

Apr 23, 2014 by Mark Maier

Did you listen to online radio last week?  If so, you join a growing percentage of consumers that are listening online according to MarketingCharts...

"Some 36% of Americans aged 12 and up listen to online radio on a weekly basis, up from 33% last year and 29% a year earlier, according to the latest annual “Infinite Dial” pdf report from Edison Research and Triton Digital. Alongside rising reach comes increased time spent with the medium, too: on average, weekly online radio listeners report spending 13 hours and 19 minutes per week listening, up from slightly less than 12 hours per week in last year’s study.

Almost half – 47% – of the 12+ population this year reports listening to online radio at least monthly, a figure that represents a modest increase from the 2013 report (45%). A more recent survey from Edison Research had pegged the total audience at 53% of the 12+ population, though that survey didn’t reference listening frequency.

Not surprisingly given that it’s a digital medium, the audience skews young. Among both monthly and weekly listeners, the 25-54 age group skews closely to the overall average, while the 12-24 bracket over-indexes significantly (75% listen monthly; 64% weekly).

When it comes to advertising, 80% of weekly AM/FM radio listeners agree that listening to commercials is a fair price to pay for free programming, and 75% of weekly online radio listeners agree. Weekly listeners of both AM/FM and online radio on a weekly basis tend to feel that AM/FM radio has more commercials than online radio (69% vs. 17%) and has commercials that are more of an intrusion (47% vs. 30%). But, they feel that AM/FM has commercials more relevant to them than online radio (44% vs. 32%).

In other results from the study:

• Pandora is the clear internet audio leader in terms of brand awareness (70% of respondents aged 12 and up), although iHeartRadio (48%) and iTunes Radio (47%) also are competitive;
• Some 31% of monthly internet radio listeners (55% of those aged 12-24) tuned in to Pandora during the month prior to the survey, compared to 9% for iHeartRadio and 8% for iTunes Radio (see here for Experian’s latest ranking of the top radio sites by share of desktop visits);
• Among weekly online radio listeners, desktops/laptops (67%) and smartphones (66%) are clearly the most commonly used devices for listening, with tablets (34%) a ways behind;
• 55% of respondents have at some point used YouTube to watch music videos or listen to music. and one-third did so in the week prior to the survey;
• Among respondents aged 18 and up who had driven or ridden in a car in the month prior to the survey, AM/FM radio was the top medium for listening (86%), followed by a CD player (61%), MP3 player/owned digital music (31%), satellite radio (17%) and then online radio (14%);
• 50% of smartphone owners report having downloaded Pandora to their device, a figure mostly in line with comScore estimates;
• 3 in 10 respondents have ever listened to an audio podcast, and half of those have listened in the past month; and
• While AM/FM radio is viewed as the most important source for keeping up-to-date with music, YouTube takes the lead among 12-24-year-olds."

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