This guest column is contributed by Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research. It was first published on The Infinite Dial blog.
It is hard to believe that it was only eight years ago that Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in his famous speech. The revolution that seems to be changing everything is of course rapidly changing audio usage as well. It seems that almost anywhere one goes one will see someone with earbuds on; tuned out from the world.
Edison’s “Share of Ear (SM)” study allows us to understand just what kind of audio is being consumed. The graph below shows what platform of audio is being consumed on mobile devices (which would also include tablets or iPods/MP3 players).
It’s important to note that this is the platform of audio — listening to AM/FM means listening to AM/FM content via streams or ‘over-the-air’. It makes a certain amount of sense that ‘owned music’ would be the biggest portion of audio consumption on mobile devices. Streaming pure-plays like Pandora and Spotify, which are in so many ways ‘built’ for mobile, account for over one-third of all audio consumption on mobile.