The New Mainstream: 2013 [INSIGHT & INFOGRAPHIC]

  A consortium of leading Internet radio companies has united for the first time to collaborate on a definitive study of Internet radio consumption in the United States. The Streaming Audio Task Force, comprising Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn, engaged Edison Research to survey over 3,000 online respondents ages 12+ to ascertain their media usage and habits, and the results indicated that for the first time in history, Internet radio is used by the majority of online Americans (53%). In addition, the total time spent with audio is clearly expanding as people are now enjoying more audio from more devices in more places.

Other principal findings of the study included the following:

• Internet radio is the third most popular way that people discover new music, ahead of Amazon, YouTube, Social Media and other sources.

• 63% of Internet radio listeners own a smartphone–and 83% of smartphone owners listen to some kind of Internet radio on their mobile devices.

• 32% of Internet radio listeners indicated that they are listening to “a lot” more of the medium than they were one year ago

• 26% of Internet Radio users tell us that their listening is mostly ‘new time’ – time not previously filled with audio of any kind

“The data clearly shows that Internet radio is not only a mainstream activity for the majority of online Americans, it’s also essentially expanding the pie for audio media,” noted Rosin. “The advent of mobile listening, and the proliferation of choices for the types of Internet audio have transformed the medium from niche activity to major media channel in under ten years. As such, advertisers should be putting more money into the audio category – because people are filling more of their days with more and more audio. We are enormously proud of this study and what it means for advertisers and audio providers all over the world.”

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