Public Radio Streaming Is on the Rise, But Audience Reach Isn't

"I have good news and I have bad news," states Steve Mulder, Director of User Experience and Analytics at NPR Digital Services. He analyzed third-quarter metrics of stream performance across 173 NPR stations.

When Mudder rolled up data from Triton for 173 station streams he found that total listening hours are up 9% from Q3 2013 to Q3 2014.

According to Mulder, "That's not a huge increase, but it's reassuring. While listening time per session is fairly steady, the number of actual streaming sessions is on the rise, explaining the overall 9% increase. However, these additional sessions aren't tons of new listeners. Cume is actually down 5% in the same time period. This trend is fairly consistent with what we observed in the spring."

He adds, "While it's terrific that our existing audience is streaming a bit more often, it's worrisome that we're not seeing real audience growth, especially given all the research that shows listening is shifting more and more to digital. What does it mean? Are people shifting more to on-demand listening? Or are people moving away from public radio entirely? Or even just listening less in general?

Among  the findings, news is seeing more growth than music.

Total listening hours for news streams is up 13% year over year, while music is up only 2%. Cume for news streams is fairly flat, while music fell 12%. AAA and jazz streams seem to be hurting more. Although we clearly still have a loyal audience for music, Pandora and other competitors in the music space continue to chip away at digital listening to public radio music.