Study: Urban Listeners Prefer Customized Playlists

In a study released in February 2015, Bridge Ratings revealed a listener preferance of cusomization of playlist over streaming stations.

The study "Music Radio's Killer Internet Strategy", included  panel of 1500 prime format users for Top 40, Country and Urban formats were offered the ability to customize their favorite station in the these formats. Compared to the internet simulcast of their favorite stations, the customized versions performed better across the board in time-spent-listening and number of occasions of use each day.

The study suggested that broadcast radio would be better off providing internet radio stations which would allow their listeners to adjust various programming elements and music mixes to the preference of the individual users.

Now, Bridge Ratings has issued an update which takes another look at the panel's behaviors now three months into the study.

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1. The original total sample of 1500 persons (500 per format) continued use of their original customized stations.

2. The number of daily occasions actually increased from January to April for all format users.

3. Time-spent-per occasion of listening slipped for Top 40 and Urban Custom station users was off slightly while Country listeners exhibited an average increase of two minutes per occasion across the sample.

4. As a side project, Bridge Ratings added four more formats to better appreciate the differences in how listeners customize their stations. A "Customization Quotient" was formulated by identifying a total number of possible customizations that could be applied to the internet radio stations and dividing that number by the average number of customizations actually used by the sample.  This analysis shows that the amount of customization varies depending on the music format.