Billboard Biz reports that a new study called "The New Mainstream" has found that, for the first time, more than half of Americans online ages 12 and up are listening to Internet radio, and that's without even accounting for growth due to the new iTunes Radio.
Larry Rosin, the president of Edison Research, presented the research on Tuesday at Advertising Week. According to the article, "that threshold [53 percent] is mostly symbolic, but the market changes have real implication to music companies. Growth in Internet radio shifts promotional power away from broadcast radio. It also shifts listening hours to platforms that pay performances royalties to artists and labels."
The Streaming Audio Task Force, a coalition made up of streaming giants Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn that conduct market research related to Internet radio, funded the study.
The study categorizes "Internet radio" as personalized radio (i.e. Pandora), live streaming (i.e. iHeartRadio, TuneIn) or on-demand streaming (i.e. Spotify). Generally the first two categories are considered radio, and the on-demand service is considered a subscription service. The reason they are grouped together for this study is their relation to advertisers.
Broadcast radio still holds most of the power in the marketplace, especially in cars. The articles cites that 83 percent of car radio is AM/FM as opposed to the Internet radio's 17 percent. Broadcast radio is head in home usage as well, but with a smaller 15 percent lead (57 percent AM/FM vs. 42 percent Internet radio). We will see if iTunes Radio has any effect on future studies.
Do you listen to Internet radio? If so, what streaming services do you prefer? Let us know in the comments section below!
