Radio Streams Represents Less than 10% of All Listening

RADIO ONLINE | Thursday, May 17, 2018 | 5:21pm CT

Edison Research

The annual conference of the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers is running this week in Denver and Edison Research is giving four different presentations on best practices in survey research. One of these presentations is from Edison VP Randy Brown, who is documenting the issues that come from implementing surveys online that attempt to measure Internet behaviors. Brown's report finds streaming behaviors can be overstated in a survey implemented online since it's difficult to reach lighter Internet users from Internet sample frames. Beyond that, about 10% of Americans still have no online access and are entirely invisible to online research.

The report documents that its research represents the total population -- using its Share of Ear studies as the example. One prime example can be seen with regard to listening to the content produced by broadcast radio stations. Share of Ear determines whether listening to radio content is coming via the over-the-air signal (whether analog or HD) or from the station's streams. It's Edison Research's estimate that 8% of the combined listening to broadcast radio content is from the streams and 92% is from over-the-air.

It is worth noting that the firm saw quite a difference based on the type of conten. For news, sports and personalities, streams comprise 12% of the total listening, whereas for music the streams are 6%. Perhaps this speaks to streaming being more vital for radio's more unique aspects.