Last updated April 2015
More than half of Americans ages 12 and older have listened to online radio in the past month, according to 2015 survey data from Edison Research – a clear indication that online listening continues to move rapidly into the consumer mainstream. And more of that listening is now being done through mobile devices than through desktops. Traditional AM/FM radio, meanwhile, continues to reach the overwhelming majority of the American public – 91% of Americans ages 12 and older had listened in the week before they were surveyed in 2014, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Nielsen Media Research data, essentially unchanged from 2013. And Sirius XM – the only satellite radio platform in the U.S. – reported a boost in subscriber numbers of almost 7% from 2013.
On the financial side, AM/FM’s revenue from “spot” advertising (ads aired during radio broadcasts, its main revenue source) declined slightly in 2014 while revenue from digital and off-air advertising both posted strong gains. Sirius XM saw an increase in revenue of 10%, up from $3.8 billion in 2013 to $4.2 billion in 2014.
According to Nielsen, the number of all-news radio stations declined slightly in 2014, to 31. News/talk/information remains one of the most popular broadcast formats for American radio listeners, second only to the category of country and new country – but the number of stations has fluctuated over the past few years.
Data on podcasts – which also had a breakthrough year of sorts largely due to the popularity of the show Serial – and on NPR are analyzed in separate fact sheets.
Online Radio Listenership
[chart id=”49051″]
In 2015, the percentage of Americans 12 years of age or older who reported listening to radio online in the past month rose to 53% – nearly double the percentage who had done so only five years earlier in 2010 (27%). Smartphones are becoming the device of choice for online radio listening: 73% listened via smartphones in the last week, up from 66% in 2014. Desktops and laptops are not far behind, at 61%, though this was down from the previous year (67%).
Web-Based Listening in Cars
As smartphone listening grows, so too does Web-based listening in cars. As of January 2015, more than a third of U.S. adult cellphone owners (35%) have listened to online radio in the car. That is substantially more than the 21% who did so in 2013, and nearly six times the number (6%) who had done so in 2010.
[chart id=”49055″]
News Stations
According to Nielsen Media Research data, the number of all-news radio stations declined slightly in 2014 to 31 and is down from 37 in 2012. Although parent ownership of these 31 stations is distributed among a total of 15 entities, just one company – CBS Corporation – owns almost a third of the stations (10). Another eight companies own a single station, and the remaining six companies own either two or three of the news stations. Audience share in 2014 for the all-news category stands at 1% – the same percentage as for religious and Spanish-language contemporary stations.
News/talk/information stations make up one of the most popular broadcast radio formats, garnering an 11% share of listeners among the age 12-and-up demographic in 2014. That is second only to country music. The number of stations, however, has seen some fluctuation over the past few years.
[chart id=”49056″]
Revenue
AM/FM’s revenue from “spot” advertising (ads aired during radio broadcasts, its main revenue source) declined 3% in 2014, while revenue from digital and off-air advertising both posted strong gains for the year – 9% and 16%, respectively. Still, those two sources make up only about 16% of total advertising dollars. Overall, 2014 revenue for the radio sector was down 1%.
