Younger Country Music Listeners More Likely To Be Streaming

Streaming to Country music grew 36% in the United States from 2018 to 2019 according to MRC Data/Nielsen Music and 54% of American Country Radio P1 listeners report streaming every day to a service like Pandora, Spotify or Apple Music.

“If you are programming a Country radio station today, the streaming audience is impossible to ignore with more than half of Country radio listeners between the ages of 18 to 44 reporting  streaming music via an on-demand music services every day” Ken Benson, co-founder, P1 Media Group stated.

"With so many Country radio listeners using on-demand streaming services, we examined the differences between what radio is playing versus listener choices using on-demand audio streaming services."

“As a proponent of using streaming data to help make programming decisions, I’m excited to see real research showing the correlation between radio listeners and on-demand streaming users” said Haley Jones, from MRC Data /Nielsen Music.

Broadly reviewing the Top 500 songs on each medium, the on-demand streaming chart is more contemporary with 58% of its Top 500 most-played songs from the past five years, 2015 to 2019, versus 49% for the most-played songs on radio. However, when P1 Media reviewed the eras of the songs in Top 100, the opposite is true.

Of the top 100 most-played Country songs on radio, 70% were from 2018 and 2019 versus 55% of those on the on-demand Audio Streaming chart. The average era of the top 100 radio songs was over a year newer than the on-demand Country songs. Furthermore, the Top 100 on-demand audio songs feature more unique artists, 58 unique artists versus 50 unique artists on the Top 100 most-played Country songs on radio. Comparing the Top 100 songs, 69 songs appear in the Top 100 on both charts, 31 songs are different.

The assumption many may make is younger people stream more.  70% of 18-24-year old’s report streaming on-demand services such as Spotify, Amazon or Apple Music everyday versus 57% for 25-34s and 51% of 35-44s.  Indeed, younger Country radio fans stream on-demand audio more frequently than older fans, yet the average era of the Top 100 Country on-demand streaming songs is more than a year older than radio’s Top 100.

⏩Key Findings

• Streaming to Country Music grew by 36% from 2018 to 2019.
• 85% of Country Radio P1s report streaming to an on-demand audio service either “every day” or “a few a day’s a week.”
• Radio is playing more contemporary music than on-demand Streaming services. 70% of radio’s Top 100 most-played songs are from 2018 and 2019 versus only 55% of songs from on-demand streaming services.
• Radio relies more on Core Artists playing more songs from fewer artists while on-demand streaming services play more unique artists.
• Radio plays less variety than the on-demand streaming services. Of the Top 500 songs on Country radio, 62% of the total spins come from the Top 100 songs versus 46% for on-demand streaming.
• The responses from Country Radio P1 listeners indicates that Country stations either missed or underplayed the biggest hit of 2019 “Old Town Road.”.