Important Trends in Internet Radio

Did you know that more than half of Americans listen to Internet Radio? Of this population, 39% choose personalized radio, 27% prefer streaming live, and 18% is into on-demand music. As more and more innovative tech start-ups jump into the game for a piece of the American music business, we might be witnessing another powerful takeover in the already-crowded industry.
Historically, we have moved from expensive Vinyl records to affordable cassettes, from loving cheap, convenient CD albums to worshipping mp3 files. The fact is music consumption has been and is going through a significant phase change—similar to when we abandoned the classic Kodak film for digital cameras in the 2000s—and its evolving trends continue to re-establish the basic structure of the music industry.Aside from the powerful iTunes, which revolutionized the way Americans buy their albums, internet radio services such as Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn, and Rdio have begun to own a significant part of the music consumer pie. As the third most popular way that Americans use to discover new music, Internet Radio has outrun even giant networks such as Amazon, YouTube, and Facebook, despite their larger and ever expanding ecosystems.

Each with its own unique services, internet radio startups swiftly compete with traditional radio stations not only in distributing popular music and audio content but also in serving local and national advertising messages to their users. Within nine years, Pandora has established itself as a major radio network with 77 million listeners and more than 9 percent of total U.S. radio listening as of May 2014. Similarly, Spotify and TuneIn are also taking over the streaming music market and growing their own empire of subscribed users and loyal listeners.