NPR: The Music Powerhouse?

According to a story by Chris Richards at The Washington Post, the Washington-based news outlet has emerged as an influential powerhouse in a splintering music industry thanks to the growing popularity of NPR Music, a Web site that has connected with music fans by premiering new albums, streaming live concerts and landing exclusive interviews.

How big of a deal is NPR in the music world? Bertis Downs, manager of R.E.M., says NPR’s endorsement now carries as much cultural weight as an appearance on “Saturday Night Live” or the cover of Rolling Stone. “When we sit around thinking, ‘How do we get attention?’ — they’re at the top of the list,” says Downs, who recently helped R.E.M. get its new album streamed on NPR Music. “We know that’s where the audience is.”

The audience is growing. In 2011, NPR Music has averaged about 2.1 million unique visitors a month, putting the site somewhere between MTV.com, which pulled in 7.1 million unique visitors in January, and RollingStone.com, which drew just shy of a million that month, according to Nielsen.

Traffic on NPR Music has quadrupled since the site launched in 2007, and it currently accounts for about 14 percent of the eyeballs visiting NPR.org. And those figures don’t even include the millions of radio listeners who catch the audio features that NPR Music pushes to NPR’s various news programs.

But as the audience for NPR Music grows, it appears to consist of a demographic that’s actually shrinking: music fans who still buy music.

Read more here.

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