Country Radio Goes Mobile – A Recap of Edison’s Presentation at CRS 2017
By edison
Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Megan Lazovick, and Larry Rosin, along with Tim Hayden from Brain+Trust Partners, presented “Country Radio Goes Mobile” at the Country Radio Seminar on Thursday, February 23, 2017.
The presentation stressed the importance of reaching listeners through their mobile devices and suggested doing so through the apps and mobile websites they are already using. According to Edison’s Tom Webster, “it’s not about the phone—it’s about what people do with their phones when they are mobile. Your mobile strategy is about the local mobile human—and radio has always been the king of the local mobile human. AM/FM radio has been mobile media since the time of the first Motorola, the transistor radio, and the Walkman.”
As the graph below shows, social media tops the list as the type of app or mobile site used by the most Country music listeners every day. Though radio stations already interact with listeners through social media, the presenters provided ideas to better capitalize on social, such as developing custom audiences. Read more recommendations on this from Tim Hayden, below.
Messaging and audio apps come in a close second and third with 61% and 56% of country listeners saying they use these on a daily basis, respectively.
This study was conducted online among smartphone owners in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 54. Ethnographic interviews were also conducted to obtain a more intimate understanding of mobile behavior.
Tim Hayden, from Brain+Trust Partners, presented CRS attendees with a number of resources and ideas to help country stations engage with their mobile listeners. The following is a complete list of the resources he discussed:
