Rock Still Leads In Music Consumption

While it seems like a country and pop world when you listen to the radio, it's a completely different planet when it comes to total music consumption across all delivery platforms, according to a study by Nielsen Music. The study selected the top musical genres looking at albums, track equivalent albums (downloads) and streaming equivalent albums. This is what was found:

1. Rock - 29%
2. R&B/ Hip Hop - 17.2%
3. Pop - 14.9%
4. Country - 11.2%
5. Dance/EDM - 3.4%
6. Christian/Gospel - 3.1%
7. Holiday/Seasonal - 2.6%
8. Latin - 2.6%
9. Jazz - 1.4%
10. Classical - 1.4%
11. Children - 1%

When it comes to actual album sales, Rock had a commanding lead over the next closest genre with 33.2% over R&B/Hip Hop's 13.9%.

This goes to show that consumers of the Rock genre are used to buying albums and are still most comfortable consuming their music that way. That said, Rock consumers have embraced streaming as well at 24.7%, just behind R&B/Hip Hop's 28.5% and ahead of Pop at 21.1%.

While Rock may not have any artists in the top 10 of almost any overall sales chart, as a whole, the genre is still vibrant. In fact, since it no longer relies on a few huge sellers to prop up the numbers, it might actually be healthier than many of the other seemingly more popular genres.

Today's Teens And Their Networks

Research company Piper Jaffery just released a new study on teens and concluded that their tastes continue to change, although not as much as you might think. For instance:

Teen now consume music by:
  MP3 Player - 35%
  Pandora - 26%
  Local Radio - 21%
  CDs - 7%
  Streaming Media - 11%

If you listen to the media, you'd think that teens only get their music exclusively via streaming, but MP3 players and even CDs still are more widely used that expected.

When it comes to social media, the top platforms for teens are:
  Instagram - 30%
  Twitter - 27%
  Facebook - 23%
  Tumblr - 5%
  Google+ - 4%
  Pinterest - 2%
  Other - 4%
  Don't Use Social Networks - 5%

What's interesting here is that Instagram is now the top teen network, while a full 5% say they don't use social networks at all! Check out a PDF of the entire survey.

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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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