Study: Online Radio Listening Flattens Out

Reposted from Media Geek:

Study: Online Radio Listening Flattens Out

April 9, 2010

By Katy Bachman

The number of people listening weekly to online radio, 43 million, hasn’t grown so far this year, according to Arbitron and Edison Research’s annual Infinity Dial Study. That could all change this summer when Apple upgrades its iPhone operations system to allow third-party radio apps to play in the background when users do other tasks.

Video viewing, at 74 million, easily dwarfs radio listening online.

The Arbitron/Edison study also found that more people are listening to pure-play online radio services such as Pandora than streamed AM/FM stations (55 percent versus 48 percent).

Radio Web sites also trail other media sites: In the past month, 27 percent said they visited a TV Web site and 27 percent visited a newspaper site, while only 16 percent checked out a radio site.

Finally, HD Radio still lacks traction: only 7 percent said they were interested in the new format.