The U.S. spends 20% of their days with audio, but what?
Image credit: David Tran
New data reveals the average American spends over 4 hours with audio every day, but what are they listening to and where?
Does 4 hours and 5 minutes sound like a lot time to spend listening to radio, podcasts, music streaming services, and satellite radio? Well, that’s exactly how long the average American spends listening to audio – nearly 20% of their day.
That’s according to the latest report from Nielsen, looking at audio listening trends in Q2 2024. In the digital age, it makes sense the people are listening to audio so much. We can access it at home, in our cars, on public transport, at work, walking down the street; audio is everywhere. But, what are we all listening to?
Despite the modernity of platforms like streaming services enhancing the availability of music, it may surprise you that radio is still by fair the place where listeners are spending most of their time. Nielsen reveal that U.S. adults spend 67% of their ad-supported audio time spent listening to radio.
Yes, that’s specifically for audiences listening to ad-supported services so doesn’t represent the large audience listening to Premium music streaming services. For adults aged over 35, the percentage increases to 74% of the time on ad-supported audio being spent on radio.
Nielsen writes: “Radio, the original ad-supported audio platform, consistently reaches all corners of the population. Among younger consumers, nearly half of all daily ad-supported audio time is spent with radio, while older listeners give almost three-quarters of their time to radio.”
Ad-supported music streaming only made up 11% of ad-supported listening in over 18 year olds. Podcasts grabbed more attention than ad-supported music streaming, with 19% of the attention in U.S. adults.
It’s interesting to see the insignificance of music streaming’s ad-supported options against traditional radio. Particularly as premium music streaming continues to grow. In fact, some in the industry argue that it is time to end free streaming to focus on the larger benefits to artists from premium audiences.
Apple Music recently made a huge move to enhance artists’ understanding of their popularity on radio stations. Using Shazam’s recognition technology, Apple now show artist’s radio plays for over 40,000 global radio stations in their Apple Music for Artists dashboards. As radio seems to remain a significant part of listener’s audio consumption, this is meaningful data for artists.