Earlier this year we partnered with Nielsen on a quarterly report called The Record, a look at the ad-supported audio landscape in the U.S. using Edison Research Share of Ear data and Nielsen format data. We are happy to tell you that The Record has just been released for Q2.
The updated data shows that of all average daily audio time spent by adults in the U.S. with ad-supported audio, 67% is spent with AM/FM, 19% with podcasts, 11% with ad-supported streaming audio, and 3% with ad-supported satellite radio channels. Click below to see how listeners in other demographics spend their ad-supported audio time, and how specific radio formats are trending with over-the-air versus streaming listening.
Americans spend almost 20% of every day with audio; in Q2 2024 that translated to 4 hours and 5 minutes of daily listening across both ad-supported and ad-free platforms like radio, podcasts, streaming music services and satellite radio. The enduring importance of audio in our media habits was a driver behind the launch of The Record—a quarterly look at how U.S. audiences divide up their time spent listening, powered by Nielsen and Edison Research.
As marketers track the trends impacting their cross-channel media strategies, The Record offers a distinct perspective of the time spent with ad-supported audio channels.
Between April and June of 2024, listeners gave 67% of their daily time with ad-supported audio to radio, 19% to podcasts, 11% to streaming audio services and 3% to satellite radio. Among 18-to-34 year-olds, radio’s share of time increased from 45% in the first quarter to 48% in Q2 while podcasts decreased slightly from 37% to 35%.
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.
Tracking radio listening by format
The share of streaming listening by format is generally higher for News and Sports programming and certain rock-based formats including Alternative and Classic Rock. When sorting by race in the additional data tables, the ‘spoken word’ trends generally hold up across groups, while there are other unique differences for some Spanish-Language formats among Hispanic listeners.
As the data demonstrates, audio remains a fixture in American’s daily media habits and stands out as an opportunity for enhancing your cross-media campaigns.
