AUDIENCE FOR MUSIC STREAMS WERE DOWN IN MARCH • “NPR MEMBER STATIONS” AUDIENCE GREW BY 9% in 2019

With the majority of the U.S. population staying at home due to COVID-19, you might think that listening to music via streaming would be increasing. But that is not what the analytics are saying.

According to an article by Geoff Mayfield in Variety [link], the audience for music streams dropped 7.6% during the week of March 13-19.

Mayfield said the major reasons for the decrease are disruptions in lifestyle and the need to know the latest news about the virus.  

The article says that Nielsen reported a 60% increase in overall TV viewing during the week ending March 20^th. Much of the increase was viewership was by cable TV  news channels. During the week, CNN was up by 119% over the prior week. Fox News was up by 60% and MSNBC was up by 37% during the period.

Mayfield hypothesizes that the change is part of a larger trend of people paying greater attention to visual media. Also, fewer cars on the road means decreased listening to all sources including radio.

Public radio stations will learn more about the impact of COVID-19 on listening and use of digital platforms when the PRPD/Jacobs Media Coronavirus Survey is released next week. Also, Nielsen’s PPM ratings for March are scheduled for release on April 15^th.

WELCOME TO THE MURKY WORLD OF STATION-BASED AUDIO STREAMING

Streaming audio is touted as an important new revenue source for broadcast stations. 

In 2018, Global Media Outlook projected that listening to audio streams from AM/FM radio stations would grow by 7.8% by 2022 and generate over $2 billion in new ad revenue.

Listening to audio streams can be tracked to the nanosecond but the big picture data is harder to find. 

These data are available only to those who can afford to buy it.

Spark News compared Triton Digital data for January 2019 and January 2020 (chart above). The top audio stream source was Pandora. However, you won’t find data for Spotify on the Triton chart because they are not Triton clients. Triton also will not tell you the stats for SiriusXM or the music channels on YouTube.

Triton’s metric of choice is “Average Active Sessions” (“AAS”), a measure of the number of active streaming sessions during a specified time period. When we compared AAS for January 2019 with January 2020, six of the top ten streaming publishers had increased their AAS.

Radio.com, an aggregator of radio station streams and Univision, a Spanish-language broadcaster and podcaster, led the pack with growth of 16%. Accuradio, another aggregator, had the biggest decline, down 12%.

The AAS for “NPR Member Stations” was up by 9%, but that group doesn’t include all public radio stations. Below the top ten, the AAS for New York Public Radio was down 22%; the streams of KUSC/KDFC were down over 19%.

We asked people at NPR which stations were in included in “NPR Member Stations,” but we did not receive a reply.

In July 2016 NPR moved its audio streaming to Triton. Member stations had the option of using Triton’s Core Publisher platform. Some stations declined the offer. Triton said that he numbers for iHeartRadio do include all of iHeart’s station-based streams.