Radio dominant – but don’t ignore those pesky 18-34’s who have gone digital

I follow lots of radio trades, and one thing circulation is that radio is a new 60 Minutes study detailing radio’s “dominant” position.

Now as a radio veteran I don’t want “radio” to die.  Of course not.  I’m not here to bury “radio.”  But I think saying it is “dominant” at 49% (down from what, 98%) and ignoring the factoid below is naive.

 

 

Instead, the top choice among Americans aged 18-34 is some form of digital music service (35%) followed by iPhones, iPods, and mp3 players (29%).

via Inside Radio, The Most Trusted News in Radio.

Oh yeah those 18-34’s.  The ones that are 28-44 in ten years.  You remember ten tears ago, we called in 2004.  Does ten years seem so far away now?

The keys here continues to be content and distribution.  You can have awesome content but if nobody can find you it does you no good.  Also, as we are seeing, you can have a fancy FM stick that is heard “everywhere” and the next generation doesn’t care.  Grab a Howard Stern and folks will go out of their way to find you.

Commercial-free/commercial-lite music?  There’s an app for that and the next generation has it.

Very interesting times. Check out the survey which I’ll dive in on more tomorrow.