A couple of weeks ago we looked at the stock performance of three publicly traded audio stocks from the first of the year. By placing the three trendlines at the same hypothetical point to start, we could compare their fluctuating gains and losses against each other as percentages.
That snapshot was taken April 8, and featured Spotify (SPOT), Sirius XM which owns Pandora (SIRI), and iHeartMedia (IHRT).
Today we revisit the year-to-date chart with Entercom added — ETM is the second-largest commercial radio group in the U.S. after iHeartMedia, and owns the RADIO.COM streaming portal, as well as the Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Studios podcast networks.
Here is the chart, showing YTD loss for each stock, with Spotify and Sirius holding withstanding COVID-19 disruption better than iHeart and Entercom. Spotify’s relative steadiness seems intuitively understandable, as sheltering at home could lead to more streaming. (Also, Spotify is a global operation compared to the mainly U.S. scope of the others.) But in all cases, habitual listening patterns are at risk of disruption during a time when daily routines are displaced.
