YouTube’s influence and audience clout are widely recognized in a general way, but the video platform’s competitive stature is quantified explicitly in new data from Edison Research. In a 44-page slide presentation, one crucial fact is that radio’s most ardent listeners are sharing time with YouTube, especially in the CHR, Urban, and Rock categories.
Edison’s new reporting is derived from The Infinite Dial 2014, an annual survey of how Americans consume audio across multiple platforms, mediums, and technologies. The Infinite Dial 2014 was unveiled on March 5. Today, Edison focuses on the database of survey results through the lens of radio P1 listeners — those who are most loyal to a particular station and its programming category.
“While radio has spent much of the last year focusing on Pandora and Sirius XM, YouTube remains a major destination for many formats’ P1 listeners,” says Edison Research VP of music and programming Sean Ross. “In fact, nearly as many Top 40 P1s use YouTube for music in a week as the 60% that use Pandora in a given month.”
YouTube as a quiet threat is an important point to make, especially given Google’s reported (well, rumored) plan to launch a music-only, paid-subscription version of YouTube sometime this year.