Pandora equal to FM in Millennial listener survey

This week Mark Kassof has been releasing installments of his ListenerThink study, in which Millennial listeners were asked to rank their sentiment toward FM, AM, and a selection of Internet music services. Pandora and FM came through with the rosiest scores. Respondents favored them equally, according to an index score developed by Kassoff.

Survey participants were asked to rank their feelings about each included listening mode as Love, Like, Dislike, Hate, indifference, or unawareness. Kassof breaks out the percentage of each response across the sample, and you can see the results on the kassof.com blog. The top ranking (Love) was bestowed on Pandora by 39 percent of respondents, compared to 37 percent for FM.

We find it interesting to look at Love and Like combined, as a generally favorable Love/Like score. Through that lens, FM dominated the results with 82 percent, Pandora got a strong 65 percent, and iTunes Radio settled at 42 percent. 

That’s a distorted view, though, both because it ignores other responses, and because familiarity with FM is higher than any of the Internet platforms. Kassof solves the irregularities with a mean score of all rankings, eliminating respondents who were unfamiliar with the listening mode. In that view, Pandora and FM came through with score

Brad Hill