Thursday, August 16, 2012

Radio Still Tops In Music Discovery

radio image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 music industry blog
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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1 comment:

Jef Knight said...

Good post. Stats are always a good topic.

My guess is that, like me, many find the radio useful in the car.

I generally don't listen to radio, or much of anything, at home because I'm too busy producing music and, at the end of the day, need a break from music.

But in the car it's a must have. I could play CDs, but I find that I enjoy hearing new stuff, which radio give off a-plenty.

Recently I've been involved in a sort of country-ish project and have started to listen to the local country station when driving. (and I'm actualy liking it!) New country is like old rock with a twang. I can dig that.

I live in an area, here in Central Ontario, where radio is still king. It's like living in Alabama, but with education and health care.
And tons of radio.

Cheers

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