| The Web Radio Stream Continues To Flow |
Despite the threat to many Web radio stations of possible voluntary cessation because of the issue of payment of music royalties, more people than ever listened to Web radio during July. MeasureCast, Inc. reports 4.6 million people listened during that time period, up from the 4.3 million people measured in June. As a matter of fact, the total time spent listening to Internet radio since this past January has increased 714 percent.
MeasureCast CEO Randy Hill says, “Internet radio is more popular than ever...” But, Hill also adds, “Neverless, only 27 percent of the U.S. population, or 77 million people, has listened to a radio Webcast. That means the industry has plenty of room to grow.”
According to the latest numbers, London-based Virgin Radio and its “Hot Adult” format was the #1 Station in Measurecast's survey. It had a cume of 241,237 listeners. (Cume is an estimate of the total number of unique listeners who had one or more listening sessions lasting five minutes or longer during the reported time period.) The second most listened to Web station during July was jazzfm.com with a cume of 206,401, also based in London. Classical listeners put New York City's WQXR-FM at the number three spot with 173,275 listeners while ESPN Radio, an internet-only station, was in the number four place and Radioio, an Adult Alternative formatted Internet-only station, was number five.
It's interesting to note that out of the Top 50 highest-rated radio streams on the Internet during July, 21 of these stations are Internet-based only. Considering how many decades traditional commercial radio has been afforded the luxury of endearing itself to listeners, over 70 years, the fact that almost half of the most listened to stations are Internet-based is very telling. If Web radio has made this much progress in just 5 years, we can well imagine what another 5 years will bring.
And, of the Top 5 stations in the MeasureCast survey, two of the formats, Jazz and Classical, are the formats most traditionally ignored by commercial radio. It doesn't take the computing power of a Pentium chip to figure out that these facts and figures demonstrate quite clearly that there is discontent with traditional radio and Web radio is quickly filling in the void.
- Corey Deitz
