There’s a new study on media habits by Canadians. Where do you fit in?

Back in February, Edison Research and Triton Digital conducted a survey of 1,001 Canadians 18 and over to find out how we’re consuming media products these days. Here’s the executive summary. (The full story can be found here.)

• Smartphone ownership is steady at 86% of the population. (My 87-year-old father is part of the remaining 14%. He’s got some kind of flip phone that he carries in a pouch on his belt.)
• Tablet ownership moved from 46% to 54%. That’s probably a factor of the pandemic as most people needed something to distract them while in lockdown.
• Smart speaker awareness was at 77%. Ownership of those devices ticked up from 26 to 27%. (America is at 32%.)
• Streaming of AM/FM stations grew to 70% of us listening to radio that way weekly.
• 71% report listening to some kind of online audio within the previous month. Again, credit/blame COVID.
• Of all the online products, most people are aware of Spotify (77%), followed by Apple Music (74%), YouTube Music (64%), Amazon Music (57%), HeartRadio (43%), and SoundCloud (39%). Deezer, Tunein, Tidal, and something called LiveXLive bring up the rear.
• 41% of Canadians say they use Spotify most often. About 25% of us used to listen to Apple Music, but that’s now down to 15%.
• There’s a correlation between online audio listening and smart speaker ownership. If you have a smart speaker, you’re more likely to stream audio.
• In-car audio is way down, from 92% to 77%. Who’s been commuting over the last year?
• The most-used audio source in the car? Radio (79%) followed by owned music (i.e. plugging in your phone to access tracks, 39%), CD player 32% (a lot of new cars don’t come with CD players), podcasts (20%), online radio (17%), and satellite radio (16%).
• 78% of Canadians say that they’re familiar with the term “podcasting.”
• 57% of us listen to podcasts at least monthly. The gender balance for podcasts is 53% men and 47% women.
• Most people (23%) listen to three podcasts a week. Then there’s the 10% who say they listen to 11 or more. Who has that kind of time?
• 23% of Canadians have been listening to podcasts for five years or longer. 11% just picked up the habit in the last six months.

Again, the whole report can be found here.