Study: Majority Now Listening OnLine

The Streaming Audio Task Force, comprising Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn, engaged Edison Research to survey over 3,000 online respondents ages 12+ to ascertain their media usage and habits, and the results indicated that for the first time in history, Internet radio is used by the majority of online Americans (53%). In addition, the total time spent with audio is clearly expanding as people are now enjoying more audio from more devices in more places.

The study, entitled The New Mainstream: 2013, was presented at a special event collocated with Advertising Week in New York City on September 24th, where Edison’s President, Larry Rosin, unveiled the results of the study and moderated a panel of executives from all three Streaming Audio Task Force participants.

Other principal findings of the study included the following:

• Internet radio is the third most popular way that people discover new music, ahead of Amazon, YouTube, Social Media and other sources.
• 63% of Internet radio listeners own a smartphone–and 83% of smartphone owners listen to some kind of Internet radio on their mobile devices.
• 32% of Internet radio listeners indicated that they are listening to “a lot” more of the medium than they were one year ago
• 26% of Internet Radio users tell us that their listening is mostly ‘new time’ – time not previously filled with audio of any kind

"The data clearly shows that Internet radio is not only a mainstream activity for the majority of online Americans, it’s also essentially expanding the pie for audio media," noted Rosin.