Curious about what’s going on in the Digital Audio industry? Is it really growing? How is it growing? What is changing? At Direct Results, we were wondering too! So, we did some research and found all the major Digital Audio Insights & Trends from January 2017.

Here’s everything you need to know about Digital Audio in January 2017:

Average Active Sessions (AAS) across all Streams: During the Monday-Friday 6:00am-8:00am daypart, total weekday listening remains steady at just under 5 millions Average Active Sessions (AAS).  The Monday-Sunday 6:00am-12:00am daypart also holds constant at 4 million AAS across all streaming platforms.

Peak Listening Hours across all Digital Audio Streams: Midweek listening peaked at 2:00pm in January, down from 3:00pm in December, 2016. Weekend listening remains the same month over month, peaking at 1:00pm.

Largest Listening Gains by Format: When comparing formats listened to on streaming audio from December 2016 to January 2017, the Country music format shows the largest gain in January, increasing 24% in AAS during the Monday-Friday 6:00am-7:00pm daypart, followed by News/Talk (up 19.36%) and Classic Rock (up 18.90%).

Largest Listening Gains by Market: For the second month in a row, the Detroit market shows the largest gain in listening, increasing 12% in AAS during the Monday-Friday 6:00am-7:00pm daypart. This could be a result of the influx of millennials into the Detroit-metro area. Following Detroit, the Philadelphia, Dallas, and San Francisco markets have also shown consistent listening gains month over month.

Year-Over-Year Listening on all Publishers: Total listening for all publishers shows positive gains when compared to January 2016.  The Monday-Friday 6:00am-8:00pm daypart shows a 10.55% increase in AAS and the Monday-Sunday 6:00am-12:00am daypart showed an 11.76% increase in AAS.  Pureplay publishers show the highest percentage of listening gains year-over-year with a 12.78% increase during Monday-Friday 6:00am-8:00pm daypart and a 13.66% increase during the Monday-Sunday 6:00am-12:00am daypart. Pureplay publishers show less Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL), below .60 ATSL, compared to Broadcast streams, over .70 ATSL (all streams).

Station Average Active Sessions Average Session Starts Average Time Listening
Pandora 2,345,170 1,232,392,899 0.58
Spotify 1,659,259 1,312,019,453 0.39
iHeart 418,860 259,578,106 0.49

The Bottom Line:

  1. Pandora shows the most Average Active Sessions compared to all publishers.
  2. Spotify carries the most Average Session Starts (SS) compared to all publishers.
  3. Pureplay publishers show low Average Time Listening numbers compared to Broadcast Network streams.
Average Active Sessions (AAS)  Defined as the “Total Listening Hours” (TLH) divided by the number of hours in the reported time period.
Total Listening Hours (TLH)  Defined as the total number of hours that a station/publisher has streamed during sessions with a duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period.
Session Starts (SS)  Defined as the number of different requests for streams (i.e. stream requests) with a duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period.
Average Time Spent Listening (ATSL) Defined as the average number of hours for each session with a duration of at least one minute in total within the reported time period.  Calculated as total time spent listening divided by active sessions.