With music streaming services increasingly diversifying their output into a mix of music and spoken word content, today’s chart looks at how radio engagement fares in the face of this new competition.
Breaking the data down by age shows how older and younger internet users differ sharply in their listening habits, with 16-24s listening to music streaming services for an hour longer, 55-64s spending 38 minutes more listening to the radio, and 35-44s split evenly between the two.
But in putting a spotlight on younger internet users, we can see that of the 36 countries tracked for this question, there are 11 in which millennials spend more time listening to broadcast radio than music streaming per day. The countries where this is most pronounced are in Europe, where there is a strong tradition of public broadcasting. Sweden, home of Spotify, is the most noteworthy exception, as it has the biggest disparity between time spent streaming music and listening to radio. But in general, the countries most likely to see music streaming far ahead are fast-growth markets, particularly those in Asia.
Even for younger consumers, radio is very much still part of the entertainment picture – particularly so in Europe. Music streaming may be taking on some of radio’s offering, but for the time being it is complementing radio engagement, and not replacing it.
