Edison, Nielsen: Nearly 70% Spend Daily Time With Radio

The just release of The Record from Nielsen, shows American media day starts early, ends late and involves a lot of choice in what to watch, listen to and read. Audio accounts for nearly 20% of daily time; in Q3 2024 that translated to 3 hours and 57 minutes of daily1 listening across both ad-supported and ad-free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio. The Record is a quarterly report card on how U.S. consumers spend their listening time, fueled by Nielsen and Edison Research.

While advertisers are constantly tracking changes in consumer behavior to improve the impact of their cross-channel marketing, The Record helps cut through with a unique representation of the time spent with ad-supported audio channels.

From July to September 2024, listeners spent 67% of their daily time with ad-supported audio with radio, 18% with podcasts, 11% with streaming audio services and 3% with satellite radio. Among 18-to-34 year-olds, radio now accounts for the majority of daily time spent with ad-supported audio; growing to 51% in the past quarter from 48% in the second quarter. Listening share for podcasts (31%) among the same audience decreased for the second quarter in a row, down from 35% in Q2 and 37% in Q1.

This chart shows how Americans spent their time with ad-supported audio in Q3 2024.

Explore even more audio insights with the additional data tables here.

It’s not just younger listeners who are tuning into radio, the original ad-supported audio platform. At every age, consumers spend more than half of their daily ad-supported audio time with radio, and listeners 35 and older give nearly 75% of their audio time to radio.

The following tables report how the share of audience varies by format, age, demographic and platform for the top 15 largest-reaching AM/FM radio formats. These differentiate between the share of all radio listening and the share of streaming listening specifically, which are those listening to the digital streams of AM/FM radio stations.

 
Tracking radio listening by format

This chart compares which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.

With U.S. election news heating up and key sporting events in the third quarter, the Edison team saw the share of streaming listening for News and Sports programming increase. Streaming ‘shares’ were also noticeably higher this quarter for both Adult Contemporary and Urban Adult Contemporary / R&B, while Classic Rock shares remained elevated—a common trend seen during summer months when listening often peaks compared to the rest of the year.

As the data demonstrates, audio remains a fixture in Americans’ daily media habits. As you dig deeper into audience trends and begin to plan for 2025, consider how audio will fit into your cross-media campaigns.

The Record provides a quarterly analysis of audio listening behaviors across the total radio universe. The charts represent average daily usage and share of listening for U.S. audiences.

Source:1Edison Research, “Share of Ear®” Q3 2024