A Look At The American Listening Audience

Edison Research and Triton Digital recently released their annual Infinite Dial survey on American media consumption.

As usual uncovered some very interesting data about the audience that hopefully listens to your music. Here are 7 takeaways.

1. 71% of all Americans now have a cell phone, up 10 points from last year. More and more, people consume their media on this platform. 

2. Embattled Pandora is still the leader in music streaming with 54% of online radio listeners. The runners-up are pretty distant, with iHeartRadio at 11%, Spotify at 10% and iTunes Radio at 8%. 

3. Facebook is the most used social network at 65% of those who regularly use social media. 

4. Facebook is even big in the age group that's seeing the most attrition - ages 12 to 24. 43% in that group still use Facebook, handily beating Instagram at 18%, Snapchat at 15%, and Twitter at 8%. 

5. 63% of Americans use YouTube to watch music videos and listen to music. 

6. That number increases to a whopping 90% ages 12 to 24 years old. 

7. 44% of all Americans listen to music online in some form every week.

Media consumption has changed drastically in the last 5 years and continues to change right before our very eyes. One of the keys to your online promotion strategy is knowing your audience, and the above data helps to understand just who the audience for your music is and how they like to consume it.

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You should follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business, Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

The Generation Gap In Music Streaming

It's been said that statistics can be presented to reach any conclusion that you want and that's true to some degree. While a chart or graph might show one thing, it may overlook or ignore the real reason the result is happening.

Take for instance this infographic from Statista that shows the generation gap of the users of streaming music. The information comes from Edison Research's annual survey called The Infinite Dial and shows that Baby Boomers are way behind the curve when it comes to streaming adoption, as opposed to 12 to 24 year olds.

What the chart doesn't take into account is that 12 to 24 is the prime age for music consumption. 25 to 54 is when people are starting families and working and therefore have less time for music in general, while people ages 55+ typically consume far less music in general because of other interests.

The point is if you look at any area of music consumption, you'll find the same general breakdown.

A couple of things about this chart that are interesting though:

1. All age groups use Pandora much more than than the on-demand Spotify service.

2. More people use iTunes Radio than generally believed.

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You should follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business, Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

What's The Most Downloaded Smartphone Audio App?

Every year Edison Research produces a research document entitled The Infinite Dial that looks at the state of radio, and more recently, the social media around it. This year's survey has a number of very interesting facts, but one that stuck out was the most downloaded audio app on a typical listener's smartphone. This is what it found.

Pandora - 50%
iHeart Radio - 16%
Spotify - 9%
Google Play All Access - 4%
SiriusXM - 4%
Slacker - 4%
Tunein Radio - 3%
Rhapsoday - 3%
Songza - 2%
Last.fm - 2%
Rdio - 1%
Stitcher - 1%

What's interesting is the inroads that Pandora has made, and how little market share other services like Spotify and Slacker have. Pandora is a lot more powerful than many give it credit for.

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Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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