"Although AM/FM radio remains America’s favorite music-listening choice, the basket of Internet radio and streaming services that are available today have, on the whole, replaced CDs for second place."
NPD’s newly released “Music Acquisition Monitor” tracks growing use of Pandora and other music services, as listening to CDs and digital music downloads declines, putting pressure on traditional forms of music listening.
Sure, we can all gather together at radio and sing kumbaya, deluding ourselves with the mentality that nothing seismic is happening, and maybe if you only have a year or two to retirement that will work for you.
For the rest of us, the rules are changing and just being local and playing good music are not going to cut it. It's time to train all of our personalities and news readers to become entertainers. And, if they can't do it every hour, every day, it's time for managers to look for their replacements.
There's a reason why we have been preaching the following for 15 years, at least.
The A&O&B client stations which have implemented this plan are doing very, very well with these and our other "values based programming" principles guiding strategy.
If you have any doubts about your station, ask us to do a programming audit for you.
3 comments:
Don’t panic is music industry analyst’s advice to radio. Nearly four-in-ten (37%) of U.S. internet users listened to music on a streaming music service
in the past three months. That’s a 27% increase over the past year, according to NPD Group.
Yet even with all that digital music consumption, three-quarters said they still listened to FM/AM radio. “You still have to say this is the dominant by far source of how people are listening to music, and the good news for radio is we’re not even including talk radio in this,” NPD analyst Russ Crupnick says.
NPD bases its findings on quarterly surveys of more than 4,000 people age 13 and older. The latest results are based on the quarter that ended June 30. The firm’s research finds FM/AM listening slipped 3% compared to a year ago but he points out its used by more than twice as many people as internet radio and nearly twice as many who listen to CDs.
“AM/FM may be a little more immune than some of the other options, like listening to CDs which has taken much more of a hit,” Crupnick says. He thinks the real challenge for over-the-air radio will be when the penetration rate for digital dashboards climbs higher, pointing out its research finds that a high number of Pandora users are already connecting while in the car. NPD says that since 2009 the percentage of Pandora users who also listened to AM/FM radio declined 10%. It was a slightly steeper 12% drop among younger demos.
The number of Pandora users who reported listening to CDs fell by 16% in the past year. Crupnick expects the trend to continue as consumers become more comfortable with ownership defined as a playlist, rather than as a physical CD or MP3. His message to broadcasters is don’t panic.
“From a consumer perspective radio’s still relevant,” Crupnick says. That’s because NPD’s research finds that Americans — old and young, music fans and casual listeners — overwhelmingly agree AM/FM radio is still the best way to learn about the music that’s out there.
“If the sky is falling, it’s falling very slowly,” he says.
That chart on your blog is from their press release and is of Pandora users, not all radio users - which is why we at Inside Radio went in a different direction, as above.
USA TODAY markets reporter Matt Krantz: "Investors are starting to pay less attention to the device, and more to the content. The goal is increasingly to score in the digital world no matter where, or how, consumers are accessing content."
If investors are paying less attention to the device and more to the content where should the focus of your public company be, Mr. Broadcaster?
And for any broadcasters who wish themselves to be in the distribution business rather than the content one, what do investors know that broadcasters do not know?
What would happen if we crowed less about our ubiquity and more about our content innovations?
In fact, what if we crowed less and innovated more?
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