AndoMedia has (finally) released audience data for May, June, July, August and September 2009, now called the Internet Audio Top 20. The long wait for new rankers was a result of an overhaul to the ratings. Substantial changes include moving to a one-minute listening session as qualifier for measurement instead of the old five minute rule; and new metrics such as Session Starts, Average Active Sessions, and Average Time Spent Listening to replace Average Quarter Hour and Cume. From the press release, here are the definitions of each term:

Clear Channel: AAS 72,257; SS 16,879,841; ATSL 2.38

There’s no sign of Targetspot’s network in this ranker, although they announced in April that they would begin using Ando’s measurement, consolidating the industry on one audience measurement platform. Katz’ Online Network is the only sales network reflected in these new rankers.

NPR’s digital platform is diverse and often sets the standard for ways that broadcast stations can expand content online. As evidence of that, this week they debuted the new album by Norah Jones. Debuting this album as part of their “Exclusive First Listen Series”, NPR offers a huge value proposition to listeners who can go online and listen to Norah Jones new album The Fall song by song, or in its entirety.

The album, by Grammy award winning Jones, features songs written by Ryan Adams, Jesse Harris and other noteworthy musicians. It will be released on Blue Note Records on November 17th, which means that for two weeks you can hear it exclusively on NPR. Previous albums debuted in this series include Bjork, Moby, Regina Spektor and Leonard Cohen. A pretty diverse bunch for a brand that used to be primarily associated with news or classical music.

I’m listening to Norah’s album now and loving it. The start of the album was preceded by a preroll for Bose. Apparently, NPR is not shying away from an ad supported model online…

A Nielsen analysis of a media use study conducted by the Council for Research Excellence found that that 90% of consumers listen to some form of audio media per day. Three quarters of that listening is to broadcast radio.

Unfortunately, the study decided to group broadcast and satellite radio listeners into one group and call them radio listeners, (to the benefit of that group), which I find a little misleading. Internet radio doesn’t have its own group, it ends up partly in “portable audio”, along with mp3s and ipods, and partly in “mobile phones.” So the groupings were definitely made in favor of broadcast radio and not in favor of Internet radio. That said, there’s some interesting stuff about Internet radio usage if you look beyond the groupings.

According to the report: “Audio streamed to a computer or laptop was highest among those with incomes above $100,000(16.3%), persons aged 35-54 (13.5%), and those with two or more children in the home (13.2%)….7% of all audio media exposure throughout the day was to streaming audio, [other than on mobile devices] with listening split relatively evenly between home (52.7%) and work (48.8%).”

Buried deep in the actual study I found this graph, which shows Internet radio’s reach on a daily basis to be 9.3% of all adults, and 11% if you add in the mobile audio stuff.

Source: Nielsen CRE Media Study

Joining the parade of predictions that online radio revenue will grow in 2010, SNL Kagan predicts that by 2013 online radio revenue will account for nearly 5% of radio’s overall number. Kagan’s announcement, published as part of SNL Kagan’s Broadcaster Investor Service, expects 12% growth this year, with radio’s online revenues tallying $441 million (up from $394 million last year).

Beyond that, SNL Kagan projects an annual online revenue growth rate of 20% in 2010 to $530 million. As the market matures, growth is expected to level off through 2013, rising to $827 million, or 4.7%, of total radio revenues by the end of the five-year period. That compares to 2.0% in 2008 and a projected 2.7% of total radio revenues in 2009.

The decline in broadcast radio revenues has helped to spur the growth of online radio dollars, according to the report. Out of necessity, stations looked to develop online initiatives with websites, streaming and mobile applications to replace traditional ad dollars and increase sales.

The report is focused strictly on broadcasters and appears to refer only to online revenue growth for broadcast stations. Pure online stations such as Pandora, AccuRadio whose revenues would be completely online do not appear to be part of this report.

Flickr: Inno'vision

A new study by brand strategy firm Cone Inc. reveals that 80% of new media users interact with brands online, the majority doing so on a weekly basis. What’s more, consumers tended to have a more positive opinion of brands that interacted with them in new media, and were more tolerant of marketing messages accompanying that interaction.

“Consumers haven’t yet been exhausted by brand oversaturation in the new media space,” says Mike Hollywood, Cone’s director of new media. “There is still an opportunity for forward-thinking companies to establish a presence and earn a competitive advantage. Based on the growth of user interactions with companies, countless purchase decisions are being influenced by new media. It’s imperative to get on board now that the train has left the station.”

Relative to this news, the IAB, the online ad association, has just released some new recommendations for making online ads more effective. Their advice: keep it simple. Assume that you have a very short amount of time to influence the viewer/listener, and make your point quickly and effectively.

While these recommendations do not apply specifically to Internet radio, there’s good reason to take the advice that’s given and abandon any thoughts of running :60s on streaming stations. Even :30s are probably too long.

More advertisers are beginning to use Internet radio, according to several reports 2010 will be a banner year. It’s important, particularly for advertisers who are transitioning to online radio from broadcast radio, that they use different creative messaging to reach Internet radio’s online audience. Ideally, ads will include an interactive call to action: click the banner, send a text, visit a website, become a (facebook) fan. That’s what consumers want and expect. Sellers must be responsible and advise their clients: shorter messages with ways for consumers to interact are the keys. And for goodness sakes, forget the 800 number…

Google provided details of their Discovery music platform on a live press conference wednesday at 4pm pt. The big deal that leaked last week and was fully outlined during the presentation is that Google is integrating a music search feature into Google Search.

According to Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, two of the top ten most searched for terms of all time on Google are music and lyrics. Which speaks to the fact that people are looking for it, and don’t know where to go to find it. With Google’s new Music Discovery platform, you can search for music by band, singer, song, album or lyrics, and the results that are returned to you will allow a full song streamed play along with a purchase opportunity and other stuff.

Gracenote will partner with Google to enable full lyric searches; MySpace/iLike and Lala will provide the full song streaming piece. Other partners include Imeem, Pandora and Rhapsody, which are sites that music searches will feature as places where listeners can go to discover more music.

By all they outlined, it looks like Google has created a music search platform that will singlehandedly revolutionize online music. From building in full song plays for searches, to providing full lyric searches and offering resources to listeners for more music, they’ve created a music lover’s playground that will grow foster, grow and encourage online music. It’s a powerful position for Google, but a great one for all of online radio as well.

In the category of what-a-great-idea comes this: in England, the BBC (non-commercial radio) and commercial radio will join forces to set up the Radio Council, to focus specifically on radio’s digital future. Representatives will include the BBC as well as England’s three largest radio groups – Global Radio, GMG Radio, and Bauer Media, along with RadioCentre, a trade group that will represent all other commercial radio entities.

Reportedly, the new group will work to establish are a shared online live radio player, portal and a range of exclusive content to help boost struggling digital audio broadcasting (DAB) stations. The group will focus on digital radio in the forms of DAB and online, and will focus on devices, platforms and marketing to bring radio closer to a digital switchover.

There are lots of reasons behind this move that basically boil down to a growing concern that if radio does not move more quickly to digital platforms it will be left behind in the digital age. Andrew Harrison, the RadioCentre chief executive, said “This exciting new initiative kick-starts our collective approach to ensuring radio is at the heart of Digital Britain.”

A unified group focused on supporting digital development for radio. With the support of traditional broadcast groups and trade associations, it sure sounds like they mean business…

New mobile app for Radioio by Flycast

Flycast is a lot more than a mobile platform for streaming Internet radio stations. According to their press release this week, deploying Internet radio content on the mobile web is just a piece of what their technology is built for. Their new ADdapt platform was built for radio and video content broadcasters, musicians, labels, sports entities and distribution networks, concert promoters and other pay per event content and advertisers seeking branded channels/apps.

This new Flycast platform can create branded mobile destination websites and apps for mobile devices and provide ad management services like insertion, trafficking and reporting. More sophisticated technological goodies include a mobile personal media recorder (PMR) and time shifting capabilities.

Flycast’s ad platform enables delivery of audio, video and various display ad formats. Other monetization options include site sponsorships, content subscription services (one-time or renewing), pay per event/pay per view services, app sales, in-app upgrade sales (freemium concept) and product and content sales. They have also integrated Google’s DoubleClick DART for Publishers platform for trafficking and reporting our ad insertions.

Flycast is redefining itself as more than a radio-specific streaming mobile platform, which is a fine thing. There’s been a trend among broadcasters to do business only with vendors that were willing to spoon feed radio packaged technology to the stations. It’s nice to hear a vendor assimilate streaming radio stations with many types of entertainment content providers instead.

The mobile web audience grew by a third in the past year. Global mobile advertising is expected to climb 19% to $3.3 billion in 2010. And that’s before it accelerates in 2011. It’s a good time for Flycast to introduce a revenue focused mobile solution, and a good time for stations to rev up their streaming mobile strategy.

A newly released study done by Targetcast, a communications firm, has some good and bad news for broadcast radio.  The good: Adults 18 to 64 were found to still consider radio to be an important touchpoint for new music discovery. The not-so-good: 18 to 24 year olds were likely to indicate that radio is not so relevant to them.

Released study findings show that consumers indicate that several traditional media including newspapers, magazines and, to a lesser degree, radio, will need to change the most in the coming years. Newspapers led the pack of media needing to change, with nearly 60% of consumers surveyed identifying this medium as the one that will need to change the most – compared to 30% for magazines and 20% for radio.

Another notable discovery from the research: Men are more likely than women to replace radio with digital alternatives such as mp3 players or Internet stations, while women are more likely to stick with their favorite radio stations.

The bottom line should be taken as a shot across the bow by broadcast radio: “41% of those surveyed indicate that radio is still relevant in today’s media environment. According to respondents, radio provides a great venue to discover new music that cannot be experienced elsewhere. Maybe somewhat surprising, respondents overall prefer to listen to music through the radio station vs. Internet stations or on their mp3 player. ” However, within that overall conclusion there are several key demographics that are indicating a willingness to transfer their affinity to digital music sources including personal devices such as Internet radio, ipods, iphones and other multi-media devices.

]]> http://audio4cast.com/2009/10/26/consumer-media-study-highlights-impact-of-digital-media/feed/ 0 pennielane targetcast chart http://audio4cast.com/2009/10/22/rumors-about-google-music/ http://audio4cast.com/2009/10/22/rumors-about-google-music/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:00:12 +0000 Jennifer Lane http://audio4cast.com/?p=1752 ]]>

My inbox was all about Google’s rumored new music service yesterday.

Early in the day Techcrunch wrote: Google will soon launch a music service, we’ve heard from multiple sources, and the company has spent the last several weeks securing content for the launch of the service from the major music labels. One source has referred to the new service as Google Audio.”

Later, Techcrunch modified their report with additional information that Google will partner with music services LaLa, iLike, and MySpace (which owns iLike), and that full details will be announced next week.

And still more from Techcrunch a little later: From information we’ve gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well.” They also reported that listeners will be able to purchase songs for download.

From all of that as well as stuff I got from a few contacts and some twitter watching, it looks to me like Google is getting in to the music game. I heard that what Google has planned will be good for the online music space and will be complementary to other offerings. I gather that Google will enable searches for music. It sounds like search results will feature music services LaLa and iLike, but I think that it might not just be those services that benefit, that maybe they’re just the first partners, beta partners per se. I assume that the vast amount of music on YouTube will play a big part in this, and I suspect they’ll be room for others as well.

For the rest, we may have to wait until October 28th…