Monday, April 16, 2012

Online Radio Listening Increases

Radio Listener Graph on Music 3.0 blogA recent survey done by Arbitron and Edison Research produced some very interesting results that have a number of ramifications for artists and bands. First, some pertinent points:
  • Monthly online radio now reaches 39% of the American population, or about 103 million people. This is up 5% from last year.
  • Listeners spend about 10 hours per week listening to online radio.
  • The vast majority of online radio listeners (87%) also listen to over the air terrestrial radio.
  • 22% of online radio listeners listened to Pandora, up from 16% last year.
  • 17% have listened to online radio from their cell phone.
  • When it comes to work, 68% still listen on a regular radio
  • 45% of the population has watched videos on YouTube (only 45%?). This is up from 41% last year.
  • People spend about 4 and a half minutes watching video per week (half of what they spend listening to radio).
  • 88% of Americans own a cell phone. Half of them own a smartphone.
  • Nearly 2/3rds of 18-34's own a smartphone.
  • 60% own a portable digital media device, meaning an iPod, iPhone, iPad, MP3 player, tablet or Android smartphone. Two-thirds of them own an Apple device.
What all this means is that the line is beginning to blur between media distribution and devices. Soon people will look at "radio" to mean all types of radio, not just online, especially as more and more people become smartphone users. This will happen with all forms of media as well. People will just expect everything to work on every device from every source and won't distinguish between online or terrestrial. It make take a little time, but that time is coming.

What that means for musicians is that you have to be extra vigilant with your mobile strategy, since if it's not critical to your marketing at the moment, that time is just around the corner.
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1 comment:

Grimm560 said...

You know, it truly is unwise for any musician with a online/offline marketing plan to forego implementing a mobile strategy into those plans. I would assume that these statistics include musicians as well. Even more important is the fact that if musicians know that the majority of people they perform for use mobile devices and the Internet to consume music, then a mobile plan should be a no-brainer. So unless a musician thinks and lives like they're in the stone age, this data should always matter to them until it doesn't matter anymore.

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