December streaming, and flashback 10 years of RAIN tracking of Triton Digital Webcast Metrics

triton digital canvas

RAIN has been tracking Triton Digital’s monthly Webcast Metrics Top 20 Ranker for more than 10 years, starting in September 2009. Looking back to that Ranker, we see that Pandora’s average number of active sessions (AAS, which RAIN uses as a governing metric in the Mon-Sun, 6am – midnight chart) was 147,673. That number was just a notch lower than CBS Radio’s 148,668 average number of streams. And that was the last time a traditional broadcaster held the lead position in the Ranker.

Pandora broke one-million average streams in December, 2015, and two-million in November, 2017. The pureplay online streamer dipped below two-million in July, 2018, and has bobbed around the 2M milestone since then.

Spotify joined the Ranker as a Triton client in January, 2015, and remained in the service for four years. During that time it rocketed up its listening from 687,702 average streams to 2,535,697 streams, nudging Pandora into second place in the Ranker for the whole of 2018.

December 2019

Stream listening was level in December compared to November. The year-over-year view showed a 3% gain after removing Spotify’s metrics from December 2018.

While Pandora always holds the #1 spot in this Top-20 cohort, by a large margin, the next seven streaming entities all notched October gains over September, keeping the whole ship stead. iHeartRadio, NPR, RADIO.COM, Cumulus, ESPN, and AccuRadio all had gains of at least 5%, with ESPN pegging a startling 25% uplift from September.

Here are RAIN’s leader trendlines from Sep. 2009 through December 2019:

(We are leaving the Spotify line in place through 2019 as an important part of the 10-year RAIN/Webcast Metrics record.)

 

Brad Hill