Radio isn't dead. Yet. Thank, or blame, your car.
- Just like TV, radio is a pre-internet medium. But its usage hasn't collapsed like TV has.
- For people listening to free, ad-supported audio, radio remains dominant, according to Nielsen.
Radio is an old-timey medium that made sense when there was no other way to listen to things. But it makes no sense in the age of Spotify and podcasts and listening to what you want, when you want to listen to it.
Right?
Well, not exactly. At least not according to a new survey from Nielsen, which argues that lots of people still listen to radio.
Specifically, Nielsen says that radio accounts for nearly 70% of all listening time to "ad-supported audio" for adults in the US, with the remainder cut up between podcasts, streaming audio, and satellite radio.
Not surprisingly, those numbers are weighted toward oldsters (that would be 35 and up, for the purpose of this survey) who are likely to remember a time when radio was the only way to listen to audio.
But radio is still strong for a younger demo. Nielsen says it accounts for 45% of ad-supported listening for 18 to 34-year-olds:
If you're surprised by this, that may be because you spend a lot of time on the internet (thank you!) and/or because you don't spend that much time driving. Because cars, for lots of people, still equal radio: Edison Research says 70% of people who've been in a car in the last month are primarily listening to radio.
But, also — if you've been reading this closely (thank you!) — you will have also noticed that those Nielsen numbers only reference "ad-supported audio," which means it's not measuring all listening. Spotify, for instance, says it has 64 million premium subscribers in North America who pay to listen to on-demand, ad-free music. And they don't show up in this Nielsen survey. The same goes for Apple's Music subscribers, etc.
So what happens when you look at the way audio habits for all kinds of listening pan out?
Nielsen's data here isn't as granular as I would have liked, but they were able to give me some sense. TL;DR: Radio usage, it turns out, isn't nearly as dominant. But it's still on top: Nielsen says it accounts for 37% of all listening time, followed by streaming audio (19%), podcasts (11%), and Sirius XM (8%). (The remaining 25% is split every other way you can consume audio — stuff you own yourself, stuff you listen to on YouTube, etc.)
So where does all of this lead us?
On the one hand, it suggests that, unlike cable TV, young/youngish people haven't entirely abandoned radio. Chalk it up, most likely, to the fact that it's both free and, in many cases, still easier to listen to in a car than something delivered over the internet.
It also suggests that gravity is real, water is wet, and that just like you think, the more choices you have — and the more choices you are exposed to — the less likely you are to pick radio. Just like you thought.