Report: Substantial Shifts in the Audio Day of Americans

RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Edison Research

Edison Research has hit ten years of its Share of Ear audio survey and is making a topline finding from its subscriber-only dataset available to the public. Share of Ear is the only audio measurement service in the U.S. tracking all listening platforms. The past decade has seen some substantial shifts in the amount of time U.S. listeners age 13+ spend with various types of audio in an average day.

Ten years ago, the average American age 13+ spent just over half of their total daily audio time with AM/FM radio, including radio over-the-air and radio streams. The next highest portion, 18%, was spent with owned music such as CDs and downloaded audio files and 11% of their daily audio time went to streaming.

Today, the firm sees the increase in listening from linear sources to more on-demand audio sources such as YouTube for music or music videos (not the YouTube Music streaming service), and podcasts. Americans age 13+ now spend an average of 18% of their audio day listening to streaming music from sources such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify, 14% listening to YouTube for music, and 10% listening to podcasts.

AM/FM radio still takes the largest portion of the audio day on a 13+ basis with 36%, driven heavily by in-car listening. SiriusXM gained an overall point in the last decade, to 8%; audiobooks make up 3% of the average Americans' audio day. Share of Ear measures how much Americans are listening, where they are listening, to what content they are listening, and on what device they are listening - all factors that impact changes in the audio landscape.

Subscribers to the Share of Ear dataset attended a webinar last week to see an in-depth analysis of a decade in audio changes in the U.S., with emphasis on cohort data. Users of Share of Ear include media companies, broadcasters, podcasters, advertising agencies, law firms, and others.

Findings were presented by Edison Research Director of Research Laura Ivey. "A decade ago Share of Ear was created to answer the question, 'What do Americans listen to?' Today we can understand the listening patterns of Americans and see how audio sources have emerged to vie for our daily listening time. There are surely audio developments that we can't even imagine that will impact our daily audio time over the next ten years," said Ivey.