Data: Americans spend 20% of every day with audio
August 1, 2024
Americans spend almost 20 per cent of every day with audio, reports Nielsen. 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, accoridng to The Record – a quarterly look at how US 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 perspective of the time spent with ad-supported audio channels.
Between April and June of 2024, listeners gave 67 per cent of their daily time with ad-supported audio to radio, 19 per cent to podcasts, 11 per cent to streaming audio services and 3 per cent to satellite radio. Among 18-to-34 year-olds, radio’s share of time increased from 45 per cent in the first quarter to 48 per cet in Q2 while podcasts decreased slightly from 37 per cent to 35 per cent.
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
This chart reveals which radio formats have the highest share of listening and how that differs between total radio (over-the-air and streaming combined) and the radio streaming universe.
Q2 2024 Radio Formats
Share of Total Audience (OTA & Streaming)
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.
Q2 2024 Radio Formats
Share of Total AM/FM Station Streaming
As the data demonstrates, audio remains a fixture in American’s daily media habits and stands out as an opportunity for enhancing cross-media campaigns, concluded Nielsen.