Radio Still #1 in Music Discovery

Inside the radio and music industries, traditional radio continues to be recognized as the #1 source for music discovery. Even with an increasingly large bouquet of music options, radio is still the way that most people hear about new things. For sure, the numbers vary by demographic, but radio remains king. The latest to affirm this ranking is the NPD Group, a well-respected research firm that specializes in research on and forecasts for the online and mobile worlds.

Digital Music News discussed the NPD Group's findings, pointing out that social media plays a very small role at this point. Of course, Facebook has only recently made a big push into music with its integrations with Spotify and other services, so it'll be interesting to see what the graph looks like in a year or two.

Interestingly, as DMN highlights, consumers were also asked, What would make you buy more music?"  The #2 response was "More Facebook Alerts." The #1 reply was "FM/AM Radio Stations back-announcing the song titles." This part of the survey should be taken with a large grain of salt. It's one thing to ask consumers about how they behave now, but asking them to predict their future behavior is a fool's errand.