“When given a choice between listening to music over the Internet or traditional radio stations, 54% prefer the Internet while 30% prefer radio,” according to this research from Bridge Ratings. Is this a simple trade-off between the two, or, if it is that simple in the US, might it be different elsewhere?
I was reading The Future of Music recently, and was struck by the grim picture and grimmer forecasts it makes for traditional radio. However, the story the book told was just about radio and the US, which appears to be run by an oligopoly of characterless media conglomerates. The apparently dire state of traditional radio there has opened up opportunities for Internet radio and satellite radio that might not be so great if there were strong traditional broadcasters in the US market, as there in other parts of the world.

When you read projections about the growth (or decline) projections for media platforms, remember that cultural and historical factors have a big part to play in how quickly new platforms take off. Even in a globalised world, the variations between different regions of the world will remain significant for some time.
With that caveat, what does the Bridge Ratings tell us? The picture is quite complex — and the complexity is not helped by vague use of terms such as “music from the Internet”, which appears in this context to refer to Internet radio rather than other online sources such as download, subscription or peer-to-peer services (none of which are mentioned). But there are still some interesting points.
Overwhelmingly it’s the combination of MP3 players and Internet radio that the young people in this study rely on for their music listening — and this trend is stronger for 18-24 year olds than younger teens, apparently because the older group have more adventurous and disparate tastes not catered for by traditional radio.
The US does not have widespread free-to-air Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), but a variant, known as satellite radio, which is subscription-based. Satellite radio is also growing, but the subscription costs may make it unattractive to many young people.
Hence this chart of projections to 02010 shows the ‘listener penetration’ of Internet radio growing fourfold over the next five years. This growth is powered by the spread of wireless Internet, which opens up scope for Internet radio devices that are more like radios than traditional computers, but almost certainly have the capability to play MP3 (or equivalent) files as well, and probably have recording facilities. No doubt there will be a ‘buy’ or ‘subscribe’ button as well. People used to refer to their radio as a ‘wireless’ and perhaps this will re-emerge as a more appropriate correct term for the new devices.
Another potentially interesting finding from Bridge Ratings is that “‘iPod Fatigue’ sets in after six months of ownership”. This isn’t backed up by figures in the press release, nor is ‘iPod fatigue’ explained as a term. But let’s assume that it refers to listeners tiring of the modes of listening that current MP3 players provide. The press release goes on to say, “Primary reasons for listening to the radio are to hear their favorite music and to hear new music” (emphasis in the original), and presumably it’s the scope to hear new music — anything they’re not already familiar with — that iPod owners miss after six months. (More on this ‘necessity for new music’ in my sarcastically titled post Maybe iPods are the end of radio after all? from last year.)
In their analysis of the research, Bridge Ratings argue that, rather than satellite radio, “Internet radio and its wireless distribution continues to represent the biggest challenge to traditional radio”. Indeed Internet radio may end up posing challenges, they say, for the profitability of satellite radio.
In the US, the boundaries between traditional, Internet and satellite radio seem to be reinforced by different media ownership. This has led the different platforms to adopt different approaches to programming. The message from Bridge Ratings is that it has in turn also led traditional radio, in particular, to stray too far away from what it does well.
By comparison, the barriers between radio platforms may be softer in other territories like the UK, where DAB is developing as broadening of traditional radio, rather than a competitor, and the BBC has a high profile in getting people to listen to more radio both on DAB and on the Internet. It makes sense for the different kinds of listening afforded by radio platforms and other devices to complement each other and converge, rather than diverge.
I’ve argued before that online radio will be the model on which much listening converges, as a result of the flexibility and integration it offers with ‘private’, machine-filtered or user-generated programming, plus ease of links to relevant information. But I also think there will be no one model that sweeps all before it in a winner-take-all fashion. Most listeners will be trying to tailor their choice of music by combining more than one type of listening.
Thanks to Five Eight daily whence I found the Bridge Ratings research.