Stream Listening

October 6, 2025

It seems every week there is an article in the trades about the power of AM/FM radio vs. the online listening environment. Our percentages are great. People spend more time with radio than any ad supported digital platform.

Yay for us.

There is one small problem here. Buried in Edison’s Q2 2025 Share of Ear report was this nugget.

A significant percentage of AM/FM radio listening comes from a station’s stream. This will not surprise any programmer who regularly monitors their server-side data. It should also not surprise any of us who have listened to an AM/FM station and heard all the on-air promos for the station’s app.

Radio depends on stream listening. Radio listeners want to listen to the stream. This is where preparation meets opportunity. However, to carry the famous quote from Roman philosopher Seneca a step further – radio is very unlucky when it comes to gaining ratings from its streams.

In the PPM world it is extremely difficult for the meter to record streaming. Why? Because it is incapable of capturing any listening that occurs through wireless ear buds or headphones. As a result, Nielsen has developed the “headphone adjustment.”

How does that work? IF a meter captures any audio from your stream, it is adjusted upwards based on any number of factors that can vary by format and demo. In other words – streaming listening is weighted listening. This is great if your station’s stream is lucky enough to be heard by a meter. Unfortunately, most of that listening goes unreported.

Look at that above chart again. How different would your nighttime numbers be if they were 16-29% bigger? Same for the other day parts.

As an industry, we have invested a lot in our digital infrastructure. This is smart because we are taking our content to where the listeners are. We need to demand that Nielsen develop a system that will more accurately record that listening. The three-minute qualifier was a great move. It did a better job recording actual listening. For all I know the Nielsen skunk works are actively working on an improved digital reporting system.  We do know there was one ready to launch a few years back that was scuttled for some reason.

If the future of AM/FM radio is wholly dependent on the digital realm, we need a credible and accurate way of measuring and reporting that.

-Steve Allan, Programming Research Consultant

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