Edison: How The Pandemic Disrupted At-Home Listening

When Edison Research began measuring all audio in 2014 with their Share of Ear® product, at-home listening accounted for about 50% of all time spent with audio. That number hardly ever changed, never varying by more than one or two points in either direction as we updated the data quarter by quarter.

Then, of course, came the disruptions of COVID-19, and the picture of where people listened to audio abruptly changed. At-home listening immediately spiked to 60% of listening, and since then has only slowly retreated. In our most recent update, at-home listening accounts for 56% of all audio time. Clearly, the move of so many office workers to “work from home” has been a sticky phenomenon. Note that Edison asked respondents specifically where they are, and not what they are doing. So, while they also ask about listening in a workplace, someone who works from home is instructed to designate that as at-home listening.

There is a story deeper inside the numbers. Edison conducts the same number of interviews each day of the week, so they can actually visualize on which days people are going back into workplaces the most.

The nearby chart shows the gain in at-home listening between our 2019 or pre-pandemic estimate, and our most recent update:

As clearly shown above, Monday stands alone with the biggest rise in audio listening-from-home.

Intriguingly, before the pandemic Monday was typically the day with the least amount of at-home listening, now it is by a significant margin the weekday with the most. Wednesdays and Thursdays are by far the weekdays with the least at-home listening and as can be seen, with the least change in at-home listening compared to before the pandemic disruptions.

For many office workers, the workweek pattern is forever changed, or at least undone until the next disruption comes along.