AM/FM Radio Trails Behind in Mobile Listening

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, April 27, 2015 | 11:17pm CT

In the latest post on its Infinite Dial blog, Edison Research President Larry Rosin cited data from Edison's Share of Ear studies to describe top forms of audio consumed on mobile devices. At the top is "owned music" at 50% of users' time. The othe half of mobile consumption is divided between Pandora (20%) and other Internet "pureplays" such as Spotify and iTunes radio (14%), while listening to AM/FM content on a mobile device draws 7%, just a bit higher than podcasts.

"Many thousands of American AM and FM radio stations have their content available on mobile devices, either on a station app or an aggregator like TuneIn, iHeart or Radio.com," wrote Rosin. "There is also listening on the new NextRadio app. Radio stations spend billions in paid-equivalent value promoting these apps. And yet, all rolled into one they are getting one-third the listening that Pandora is seeing, and one-fifth of the combined pureplay listening."

Rosin concluded that "there are at least two factors driving this outcome: Technology and Content. Each plays a role in the outcome we are seeing in the mobile space."

Read the entire post here.