The reshuffling of audio listening time has winners and losers as podcasters have a new reason to celebrate, while Edison Research’s third quarter Share of Ear report has more bad news for anyone trying to sell a record or digital download.
The report shows AM/FM radio’s share of daily listening time – including over-the-air and listening to radio station streams – remains the biggest. Edison says 37% of listening time among people aged 13 and older is spent with broadcast radio. That is a one-point gain from the second quarter, which puts AM/FM back to where it was in Q1. Edison says the vast majority (32%) is spent listening via over-the-air signals.
Podcasts may not hold the biggest share – the medium came in fourth during the most recent quarter – but they reached a new all-time high. Edison says 11% of all daily time spent with audio during the third quarter was with podcasts, rising a point from second quarter.
Also rising one percent was streaming music. That brought its share to 19%, making streaming music second only to AM/FM radio.
In third place is music listening on YouTube, which held steady at 14%. Edison says that figure is for music and music videos on YouTube, explaining that listening to music via the YouTube Music app is included in the streaming music segment.
Claiming eight percent of listening time, satellite radio listening held steady during third quarter, as did time spent listening to music channels on TV, such as Music Choice, which Edison says accounted for three percent of daily audio consumption. Also holding steady with a three percent share was audiobooks.
The gains for podcasting and streaming music means time must come from other mediums, and Edison says during the third quarter that loser was owned music. Its data shows Americans spent five percent of their daily audio listening with CDs, vinyl records and digital music downloads. That was a drop of more than a quarter as owned music had a seven percent share during Q2.
Share of Ear is a quarterly subscriber-based audio listening diary survey that measures all audio respondents listen to during a 24-hour period. In the survey, Edison learns what Americans aged 13 and older are listening to, how much they listen and when, where they listen, and on what device they listen. The data has been continuously updated since 2014.