Edison Reveals Peak Listening Times For Audio Platforms

The word “daypart” doesn’t even make Merriam-Webster's dictionary. But those in the broadcast industry or advertising world know it’s how a listening day has traditionally been divided. Dayparts are the blocks of time within the day to run advertising or programming to reach certain audiences.

Edison's Share of Ear® dataset collects listening data continuously through the day, allowing subscribers to look at how listening habits differ by daypart.

The graphic below shows which daypart has the highest average listening time for each audio platform measured in Share of Ear (not which audio platform rules that daypart). It might not be immediately clear that these standard dayparts do not all have the same number of hours: some have four hours and some have five. The team at Edison has taken this into consideration, so the calculations below reflect average listening minutes per hour in each daypart.

Let’s start with AM/FM Radio. The daypart when radio usage peaks is, no surprise, mornings; also known as “morning drive time” (6am-10am). Radio has a historical focus on strong morning shows and many radio listeners have lifelong habituation to listening in the morning whether at home starting the day or driving to work or school.

What might be a bigger surprise is the one type of audio that sees its strongest daypart in the evening (7pm-Midnight) – listening to music on YouTube. During a time of day when we have historically seen audio consumption drop, as television viewing takes over, this form of music-video entertainment is used more in the evenings than any other time of day, showing what a unique form of consumption YouTube for music makes. According to Edison, we have to envision people putting YouTube on their Smart TVs or phones and either using it as background to other activities or perhaps actively watching.

Many audio types see their peak listening in the midday hours (10am-3pm). Audiobooks, owned music, podcasts, SiriusXM, and streaming all have middays as the daypart with the greatest amount of average listening. SiriusXM might come as a bit of a surprise here, as so much of its image is dominated by Howard Stern and other morning offerings. But the lure of commercial-free music leads many SiriusXM users to report long spans of listening through the midday hours.

Afternoons, or "PM Drive Time” (3pm-7pm), are when Music Channels on TV have the most listening. Keep in mind that what we are looking at here is each platform on its own, and the proportion of listening during each daypart for that platform. This is not looking at the dayparts and ranking each platform's listening during that daypart.