Despite Increase In Streaming, Music TSL Is Shrinking

Despite rising revenues and an increase in streaming, a new Nielsen report shows that total time spent listening to music is decreasing.

According to Billboard, more people are paying for subscriptions -- at the midpoint of 2019, U.S. streaming revenue was up 26% year over year. Consumers have never had so many options for listening, from free streams to pricey vinyl box sets. And yet, the average time American consumers say they spend listening to music each week has dropped from 32.1 hours in 2017 to 26.9 hours in 2019, according to Nielsen Music’s Music 360 report.

One explanation is that people are becoming choosier in how much time they spend with various forms of media.

Teens especially are engaging with music in “a short, focused manner,” says Mark Mulligan, managing director of media analysis firm MiDiA Research, whose studies have also noted a decline in time spent with music.

He points to TikTok, which allows users to add music to 15-second videos and represents a shift from passive listening to high-engagement apps that allow teens to identify with music.

Each music listener is worth more than ever, however. In the past two years, 29.6 million additional U.S. subscribers added $1.24 billion in industry revenue, according to new RIAA figures. Other forms of streaming revenue, such as ad-supported streams, grew another $386 million. SiriusXM gained a 1% share of listening time, but added 1.1 million subscribers worth about $250 million in annual revenue. These digital gains pushed total industry revenue up 22.4% in two years -- all from arguably the same number of music listeners. “You’re getting a consumer who’s willing to pay for a great service even when listening hours aren’t necessarily going up,” says David Bakula, who researches global media trends for Nielsen Entertainment.

Streaming could also be taking overall listening time from broadcast AM/FM radio and digital downloads. Time spent listening to over-the-air radio, still a popular and influential format, dropped 25%. Edison Research has found that over half of the radio audience listens only in the car. So when the percentage of people who listen to AM/FM radio in the car dropped from 61% to 56%, as Nielsen’s surveys found, listening time decreased accordingly. Yet 92% of people still say they listen to radio weekly, according to Nielsen Music, a metric that’s both consistent year over year and higher than those who watch TV (86%).