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Radio is Dead. Long Live Radio. 1
Recently Arbitron (the organization that tracks radio ratings and rankings) released its annual December 2011 RADAR® 111 National Radio Listening Report. The report provides all kinds of useful stats, non moreso than this one. Radio, good old terrestrial radio, still reaches 93% of Americans over the age of 12.
Let that settle for s second.
That means despite the way damn near *everyone* complains about how crappy radio is we still listen to it. That means that if you’re an artist who isn’t getting radio airplay you’re probably *still* missing a chunk of your core fanbase. A graphic I’d really like to see is the overlap between radio listener and internet radio listeners. A breakdown of the time those listeners split between each would also be cool.
The report goes on to break down listenership by race and education level. Radio reaches 93% of African Americans and over 40 million Americans between 18-49 who are college educated. The biggest takeaway? Although internet music portals are plenty and are coming on strong, there’s still a helluva lot of work to do in order to permeate commercial radio’s stronghold.