Radio Still Tops In Music Discovery

Yesterday I looked at the portion of Nielsen's latest Music 360 survey that pertains to CDs. Today we'll look at some of the other sections.

The one that intrigued me almost as much as teens listening to CDs is how much people still use normal terrestrial radio. According to Nielsen:

• 48% discover music most often through radio
• 10% discover music most often through friends or relatives
• 7% discover music most often through YouTube

Radio is supposed to be dying, but you wouldn't know that looking at the info outlined here. If we go even further into the data and look at teens:

• 64% of teens listen to music through YouTube
• 56% of teens listen to music through radio
• 53% of teens listen to music through iTunes
• 50% of teens listen to music through CD

There's that radio thingy again. Conventional wisdom says it's not supposed to be that high, especially with teens, but apparently it's not dead yet. But there's more:

• 54% have music player apps on their smartphones
• 47% have radio apps on their smartphones
• 26% have music store apps on their smartphones

What I'm surprised about here is that the numbers are so low. I would've expected entertainment apps to be closer to 100%.

There's some other fascinating info that can be gleaned from the survey.

• 38% of males purchase rock most often (no surprise here)
• 15% of females (compared to 9% of males) purchase top 40 most often (much lower than I thought)

• 33% of teens purchased a digital track within a week of release (lower than it once was)
• 21% of persons 18+ purchased a digital track within a week of release

• 7% of 18 to 24 year olds attend a music event once a week (that's a lot lower than it used to be)
• 30% of 18 to 24 year olds attend a music event once a month

What's most interesting in all this data is that people's listening and purchasing habits have changed in some ways and not much in others. CDs and radio are still in widespread use, but the overall enthusiasm for consuming music seems to be down. What this shows is that uur Music 3.0 world continues to be full of surprises.

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