In an interesting study published in “Rolling Stone” magazine, Edison Research has found that parents with teenagers are more likely to stream music than adults with no teenage children. As a result, those parents who are streaming are less likely to listen to FM radio.
According to Laura Ivey, one of the co-authors of the research, parents and teens are still listening to FM radio, “But the preferred way of listening for teens, around 70 percent, is smartphones. And now we’re seeing, with the parents of teens, that smartphones play almost as big a role for them as FM radio.” Are you radio executives getting nervous yet?
An interesting sidebar to this situation is that parents and their teen children appear to be bonding over this shared mutual interest. Edison Research found that 76 percent of parents and 60 percent of teens agreed that “listening to music is a bonding activity for you and your teenagers.” Well, that can’t be all bad now can it?