Forbes is reporting that internet radio is more popular than ever. Perhaps most surprising is the fact that the vast majority of radio is consumed live. In the United Kingdom, for example, 97.3% of all radio is listened to through the web while it’s happening. In this age of podcasts and prerecorded web series on Youtube, this is truly a fascinating finding.
Despite Early Predictions, Radio is Thriving in the Internet Age
When Napster, Limewire, and all those other peer-to-peer applications lawmakers and music industry professionals love so much started gaining traction during the early 2000’s, many industry insiders believed that the internet would spell the end of radio as we know it. In other words, internet would kill the radio star. More than two-billion people now use the internet, so those early estimations are, at least in a way, accurate. SEO business is booming, as are SEO reseller organizations.
However, ostensibly, the internet hasn’t harmed the world of radio. In fact, it could be argued that the transformative nature of the worldwide web has taken radio and music to a whole new level. According to the most recently available statistics from IFPI, an international body for protecting artists’ music and their income, 39% of all global music sales came from digital sources in 2013, whether from popular music stores, like iTunes, or from digital radio services, like Spotify.
While the Forbes piece focused on online radio consumption in the United Kingdom, the Brits aren’t alone in their voracious appetite. Current estimations have 54.7% of Americans filling their need for radio online, with that number expected to climb to nearly 68% by 2016. While it can and, indeed, should be said that radio has had to change to fit the different flavor that Millennials are looking for, much as they look for online blogs, it should equally be argued that the web propped up and bettered an otherwise failing industry.