Trends About Digital Audio From Share of Ear Study

RADIO ONLINE | Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Pierre Bouvard

The "Share of Ear" study for the third quarter of 2016 has been released by Edison Research. In a blog post, Westwood One and Cumulus Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard summarizes "Six Surprising Trends About Digital Audio" revealing how Americans are listening to digital audio today."Share of Ear" tracks how many Americans use each audio source and the share of time spent with each platform.

Bouvard wrote that the Q3 data reveals six key findings about the audience shares of digital audio:

1. American time spent with personally owned music is down 9%
The U.S. is transitioning from purchased entertainment (CDs and DVDs) to renting content from Spotify and Netflix. With music purchases down, the share of American audio time spent to owned music has dropped from 15.1% last year to 13.8%.

2. YouTube beats Pandora and becomes the number one streaming audio service
The audience share of consumers who listen to YouTube music videos has surged 28% from a 5.9 share last year to a 7.6 share in Q3 2016.

3. Pandora audience shares are stagnant
Over the last year, Pandora's audience share has been stuck in the mid-6's. Their growth has stalled. Meanwhile, on-demand services such as YouTube and Spotify have soared. No wonder Pandora just announced a new on-demand service.

4. Spotify's early 2016 red-hot growth has tempered
Spotify started 2016 with a bang, notching major audience growth. Over the most recent two quarters its audience share growth has been more measured. Among 18-24 Millennials, Spotify ties Pandora in share of time spent listening.

5. Listening to Apple Music steadily shrinks
Apple Music was announced to much fanfare, but since then audience shares have steadily eroded. The service's tiny shares of time spent listening are half of last year's audience share. The takeaway: Apple is not a media company and is struggling to compete in the already crowded digital audio space.

6. AM/FM radio listening continues to dominate with a 50 percent share
Streaming services have grown at the expense of time spent with owned music, not AM/FM radio. In Q3 2016, AM/FM shares are 14x bigger than Spotify and 8x bigger than Pandora.