At-Home Audio Streaming Consumption Jumps 32%

As at-home streaming activity saw an immediate uptick during the first stay-at-home orders (mid-March 2020), new research from Comscore shows home audio streaming usage increased sharply beginning in early April 2020 and continued to rise through mid-June 2020.

According to Comscore’s Total Home Panel, from the week of December 30, 2019 to the week of June 15, 2020, total average daily audio streaming hours increased 32 percent.

Driving this increase in home audio consumption are leading streaming services like Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Pandora Radio. Listening hours in over-the-top (OTT) homes increased slightly for Spotify (+1%) from January 2020 through May 2020, where it maintained the top spot for total listening hours across all OTT homes in the U.S. iHeartRadio held the second spot for total listening hours across all U.S. OTT homes through May 2020, and the service saw an 11 percent increase in listening hours from January 2020 to May 2020. Pandora experienced the largest increase, with in-home audio streaming hours for January 2020 vs. May 2020 rising 42 percent.

Many households are using connected TV (CTV) devices to listen to audio at home – including streaming sticks/boxes, gaming consoles, and smart TVs. Amazon products top the list – Amazon Fire TV has the most audio streaming at home (over 67 million hours across all OTT homes in May 2020). Amazon Echo products take up second place with over 48 million hours of audio streaming across OTT homes, followed by Google Home, with over 14 million hours of audio streamed in May 2020.

Further insights from this new OTT streaming research and about overall media consumption during the pandemic can be found at Coronavirus Insights Hub.