Comment from Wayne Stamm
One thing about all the most recent surveys on radio listening have continued to point to radio’s domination in cars, but what happens when no one is driving?
Most recently the Edison Research and Triton Digital Infinite Dial survey showed that AM/FM radio dominates in cars, and that online listening to radio in vehicles was up to 33%.
Jacobs Media will release their Techsurvey 2020 this week, and while this survey also points to a growth of digital listening to radio on computers, apps, and now smart speakers that’s 32% of usage to the average station, the lion’s share of listening (44%) is comprised of consumers punching up the station on a car radio.
The coronavirus pandemic is changing the way the world goes about its day to day business of life, so what happens to listening habits if lifestyles are suddenly disrupted?
Breakfast and Drive still gain the biggest numbers of listeners as people and according to the CRA over 7.8 million people listening to commercial breakfast radio (Mon-Fri) each week and 6.9 million people listening to commercial drive radio (Mon-Fri).
Listening in vehicles continues to be the dominant location, with 64.2% of people reporting that they listen to commercial radio there (64% in 2018), but if they are not in their cars, how do you change their habits, because listening to radio for most people is habitual, as habitual as had been their daily life.
If 42% of people listen to commercial radio at home, falling slightly from 42.5% in 2018 and 13.8% listen while at work, how are these numbers likely to be affected in coming weeks.
And what about the fallout for one of podcasts favourite listening places, the gym? With gyms closed and regular workouts gone, how will this affect wireless earbud listening.
James Cridland outlines in a recent article an expected decline in podcast listening of up to 20%, despite continual increase in the number of podcasts covering the coronavirus.
Acast says that episodes, which reference ‘corona’ or ‘covid’ in the episode titles have been downloaded more than 27.5 million times globally to date.
Music streaming also appears to have been affected by the lockdown, with Italy for example showing a 9.3% decline in music streaming last week.
Music Business Worldwide who analysed Italy’s streaming over the past weeks, predict the decline on current trends will be over 13% this week.
Radio lost its foothold in homes a long time ago and has relied on in-car listening for it’s bottom dollar, but that is about to change, and change quickly.
Wayne Stamm
When it comes to ratings of radio stations, in recent years, the total proportion of radio stations participating in the survey, for example in Sydney participation in the ratings survey has been between 86% and 87%. In the 1970s, that would be typically 98%.
So could the growth of non-participants from 1.5% (in the 1970s) to 13%-14% in the ratings be explained by community radio and the BOG (for example 2SM) alone?
NOTE: I call on higher authorities to explain whether podcasts and streaming services such as Spotify contribute to the 13%-14% of non-participants to the ratings service.
Then, discussed on this site is that one of the threats to radio station's terrestrial and its IP streaming services are IP services such as Spotify with customised playlists. To illustrate some car infotainment systems integrate IP streaming services and VOD. Recently on this site, Tesla's infotainment system have decided to remove AM and FM services.
When it comes to podcasts there are hundreds and thousands of these podcasts and not all podcasts necessarily will continue, especially by small time producers unless they are supported by other organisations or entities promoting these podcasts such as News Corp, Nine Media and the ABC. Note that I have already made a comment on the support of podcasts on this site.
When it comes to covid-19 podcasts, it raises the issue I have raised elsewhere on this site. Given that anyone with a microphone and sound card can produce a podcast, how do you know the credibility of the podcast's content?
We could certainly trust the ABC's Dr Norman Swan's podcast on the COVID-19 at https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/. However, how do we know the credibility of other podcasts? There there may well be some snake-oil merchants selling non-evidence-based potions or the podcast maker having some axe to grind conspiracy theory.
Unless the podcast's content about medical issue is evidence-based and not some crackpot, I'd stick to credible sources such as the ABC.
As a result in these trying times, it is best to stick to our ABC or other authority associated with evidenced-based colleges and professional bodies.
Thank you,
Anthony of exciting Belfield
Wayne,
These are overseas surveys. The USA have the not popular HDradio, now new cars have a wifi hotspot which uses a built in mobile internet/phone transceiver and they have pay satellite radio. Here the phone is the receiver and unless a dashboard mount is used the antenna is shielded by the metal of the car giving unreliable reception except in city areas.
USA's HD radio of out of car sales are virtually non existent, where as for DAB+ used here and in Europe there is a much bigger range of home radios.
In the USA the telcos have disabled the FM radio in mobile phones, particularly apple products to protect their iTunes. In Australia nearly all mobile phones except Apple, the FM radio works but usually requires you to use the headphone cable for an antenna.
It remains to be seen how many people listen to their ipads, smart speakers, phones and computers as compared to a radio. I just hope that there is no environmental emergency where all of the above list except the radio can fail to silence due to electricity blackouts.