Radio is not dead as a means of discovering music

How many times do we hear about the death of terrestrial radio? Both The Future of Music and The Long Tail offer a gloomy prognosis, with listener numbers apparently at a 27-year low in the US. This trend isn't so clearly reflected here in the UK, where several factors are different, including a strong legacy of commercial-free music radio and a growing terrestrial digital sector that offers niche programming (satellite radio isn't likely to be viable in Europe). Even in the US, according to new research from Bridge Ratings, terrestrial radio remains the most common place that people go to discover new music. See their recent press release for a larger version of this graphic.

Forty five per cent of their sample identified terrestrial radio as their preferred means of discovering music. Even if you take out the older 35-to-54-year-old group, and include just people aged 12 to 34, this percentage drops slightly to just over 35%.

There's a seductive myth that discovery is driven by MySpace and filesharing these days, but the figures don't support terminology as strong as 'driven'.

The new services have definitely changed the landscape, and shifted the centre of gravity for discovery. They will undoubtedly grow in significance, as will internet radio and satellite/digital radio. A decline in traditional radio may take root in other markets, as well as the US. In the UK traditional analogue radio will actually be switched off in a decade or so, but the 'traditional' radio stations are expected to survive this transition to digital, without a major shift in power, ownership or the proportion of advertisements. Not 'driven' but perhaps 'complemented'.

So for some time yet (a generation, maybe?), the new discovery services will co-exist with the old ones, rather than replacing them. And, as and when there is a replacement for radio, it may embrace some elements of the radio experience.

Gradually we will see the categories in the chart above blur into each other. The BBC, for example, is planning to offer personalised radio. This won't be the same as the personalisation offered by Last FM, Pandora or the recommendation systems I discussed with Paul Lamere and Zac Johnson (all of which are currently lumped together under "On-line networks" in Bridge's chart) — but so much the better in terms of the variety of discovery methods available.

So what's undermining radio in the US, then? In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson cites possible causes including the rise of the iPods. The problem with this is that iPods alone cannot help you discover new music (unless yours is full of music you haven't heard and presumably haven't paid for). They mainly help you rediscover music you already have (see my old comments on this). iPods are popular in the UK, and radio is holding up well. So the other causes Anderson cites may be more pertinent, and they are US-specific ones, related to the regulation of the medium the and concentration of ownership that has arisen as a result.

Comments

[Paul]

I saw this study ... I must admit I am a bit skeptical of their results. First of all, I'd guess that for the teen demographic, social networks (offline and online) are going to be very important. Kids still swap CDs and mp3 files casually. This doesn't fit into any of their categories. I just don't think they asked the right questions.

Second, the source of the survey 'bridge ratings' tracks listening behavior for terrestrial radio. They have a vested interest in a result that shows that terrestrial radio is still relevant. This, in my mind, casts a shadow of doubt over these results.

[David Jennings]

Thanks for the comment, Paul. I admit I was also slightly curious about the use of 'traditional' radio and 'terrestrial' radio, and unclear whether these are just synonyms or not (they seem to be used interchangeably).

I can see what you mean about vested interest, but how far does your skepticism extend? Would you say that terrestrial/traditional radio is not, after all, the main source for music discovery? (In other words, do you think the Bridge Ratings findings are way off, or just a bit?)

Secondly, would you disagree with the conclusion I drew from the data, that multiple and disparate sources of discovery are going to be with us for some time yet?

[Paul]

I certainly agree that there will be, as you suggest, a long tail for recommender systems. There will always be lots of ways that people discover music. I think that radio is not going to be a big player. First of all, take your own survey. Scan the FM dial and count the number of new songs you hear. Last time I did this and wrote things down, I found that only 1 in 30 stations had new music on. Here's my data:

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/plamere?entry=the_death_of_radio

The trend, at least in the USA that radio is being taken over by talk. The stations that play music typically play safe formats like classic rocks greatest hits of the 70s 80s and today ... the only interesting radio are the college radio stations, and even these are being turned into talk and commercial broadcasters.

I have 3 teenagers and 1 pre-teen. Their radio listening is limited to the time it takes for them to reach the snooze button on their alarm clocks. They find their music entirely through their social networks: friends offline and online. Radio doesn't matter to them at all. Radio just doesn't matter much for music. And it will matter less and less for talk as well. I used to listen only to radio when I was driving, now I listen almost excluslively to my iPod - music or podcasts. Radio gives me today's news, the rest I can get through other means. Radio is not dead, but it is certainly dying.
In http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/03/02/notes030205.DTL
Mark Morford sums it up best:

This is the problem with rock radio. It has become the last option, the thing you listen to only when all other options fail, when you're too tired to pop in a CD or too lazy to reach for the iPod or just a little too buzzed on premium tequila and postcoital nirvana to care about searching your glove box for that old AC/DC tape. In short, rock radio is for people who buy their Matchbox 20 CDs from Target.

[Catherine Howell]

Hi David, I recently spotted this re-issued classic graphic, showing a genealogy of pop/rock (via Edward Tufte's "Ask ET" forum) and thought of your project:

http://www.historyshots.com/rockmusic/index.cfm

I guess arguing endlessly over pop/rock genealogies has always been a big part of fandom and music discovery/appreciation. In the case of this graphic (and timelines generally), I'm also intrigued by the notion of how we create visual representations of relationships/causality, within a timeline-style diagram. cheers, Catherine

[David Jennings]

Thanks for this, Catherine. They're endless fun - and endless fuel for debate - these representations. For example, there's another more tongue-in-cheek version, showing the genealogy of pop/rock as lines on the London Underground:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/02/03/going_underground.html

The graphic that you point to stops in 1978. Things seem to have got more complex and inter-bred since then - but even so I'm surprised they managed to create that graphic without any of the lines crossing each other... was the development really so linear?

Oh, and I've been meaning to respond to Paul's challenge: "Scan the FM dial and count the number of new songs you hear". I'll post again here when I've done my own scans.