Radio’s AQH has declined sharply in the past few years, a result of less commuting and competition from pureplay music streamers like Spotify and You Tube (yes, You Tube has huge usage for listening to music in the background). And as AQH declines, so do spot rates.
How does radio stage a comeback? One of the most important elements is distribution. Better distribution at home and at work can help grow radio’s usage there – and we need it.
Imagine you’re running a company that makes a widely popular product. Sales are strong but they could be better – and one of your obstacles is that 26% of the grocery stores in your market don’t carry your product. If you could get your brand into that 26%, your sales could conceivably grow as much as 35%! (Adding 26 to the 74 who currently carry your product is an increase of 35.1%)
Radio has a 26% problem. In our recent “What Women Want” study done with Westwood One’s AudioActive group, 26% of the 1,001 women surveyed told us they had no physical radio at home and/or at work. Jacobs Media’s latest TechSurvey concludes that 26% of all consumers have no radio at home. That number is even higher among Millennials.
Streaming gets around the “no radio” problem; radio is available virtually everywhere via its streams. But streaming usage of radio is not growing very much, if at all: Edison’s Share of Ear shows streaming’s percentage of radio listening stagnant (Edison calls it “stable”) at 10-11% for several years now. Jacobs’ TechSurvey shows it growing at about 1% a year (7 points in the last 7 years).
One of the reasons for that slow growth is that radio has done a poor job getting our apps on our listeners’ devices. Strategic/Point-to-Point’s research says 64% of adults have downloaded the YouTube app, 59% have downloaded the Spotify app, but only 27% have downloaded any local radio station’s app!
We’ve got to do better. Strategic Solutions’ study says the biggest drivers of radio app downloads include the chance to win tickets to a favorite artist’s concert (24%), the opportunity to win cash and other prizes (21%) and the chance to interact with their favorite stations’ on-air personalities (21%). But the #1 driver was “free to download, and no monthly subscription fees.”
Our “What Women Want” study as well as Jacob’s TechSurvey keep finding that the number one reason people say they listen to radio is that it’s Free. And Jacobs shows “free” continuing to grow as a driver of listening, while consumers grow more and more concerned about subscriber fees for audio and video content.
Radio needs to, and can, grow its listening at work and at home. Here are a few suggestions for how we can do that:
- Remind listeners of all the ways they can listen “at home and at work” – via your station frequency, your website, your app, and on their smart speaker (Strategic’s study shows smart speakers being the #1 audio listening device for people who work at home).
- Give them incentives for downloading your app. Audacy’s recent “download our app to win a trip to see Taylor Swift in London” is a great example.
- Be sure to tell listeners where they can find the app, and that it’s FREE to download, and there are no monthly fees.
That’s how they can listen more. Why they would want to is a content question…and we’ll deal with that issue in a future blog post.