It’s not just OTT and pay-TV viewing that have seen an increase in use since the beginning of the coronavirus. Audio streaming has also been on the rise as people spend more time in their homes. Indeed, per recent data from Comscore, US households have increased their average daily audio streaming by almost one hour over the past 6 months.
The data collected during the week of June 15, 2020 shows that audio streaming households have increased their listening by an average of 54 minutes per day compared to the week of December 10, 2019, for an increase of 32%. This is, no doubt, welcome news to the 54% of brands that have increased their spend in digital audio since the pandemic.
Among the examined audio streaming services benefiting from the increased listening, Pandora Radio has seen the greatest increase in streaming hours. The service, which has seen usage drop in the past couple of years, experienced a 42% increase in listening hours between January and May of 2020. By comparison, iHeartRadio experienced an increase of 11%. Spotify’s listening hours increased by just 1%, but it remains well ahead of the other two services in terms of total time spent.
Separately, Comscore’s data indicates that listeners aren’t just streaming from their computers or phones. They’re also utilizing connected TV (CTV) devices such as streaming sticks/boxes, SmartTVs and gaming consoles.
Amazon Fire TV, already the CTV device that is used most for audio streaming in OTT households, accounted for 67.7 million hours of audio streaming across all OTT households in May of this year. This is up from 56.9 million hours in January. Another Amazon product, the Echo family of Smart Speakers, accounted for 48.4 million hours of audio streaming in OTT households in May (up from 36.3 million), while Xbox One and Google Home also saw a lift in listening, accounting for 16.8 million and 14.6 million hours, respectively.
