Streaming services over-hyped Tony Kendall tells ABC TV

Since releasing the latest research on the strength of radio compared with new digital competitors at the CRA Conference earlier this month, ARN CEO Tony Kendall has been on the front foot, putting the case for radio.
 
Yesterday he was interviewed on ABC TV’s The Business, telling reporter Andy Robertson:
 
“For all the hype of the streaming services, they’re only at 9.2% of listening, of that Spotify is 5.8% of listening.
 
“There’s a lot of hype around those new players, but the actual time that people are spending with them is not as great as people are perceiving.”
 


 
The report quotes ARN’s 22% revenue increase last year, to $221 million, with a profit margin of 25%.
 
Commercial radio as a whole is a $1.6 billion a year industry, with IBISWorld figures showing that revenue for the industry has grown by 9% in the past nine years. However, the monitoring company predicts that radio industry revenue will fall by 2% in the next five years.
 
The ABC report quotes IBISWorld analyst Andrew Ledovskikh commenting that the radio industry is resilient. His view is that radio formats do not directly compete with streaming services.
 
Fusion Media’s Steve Allen, however, says that people are spending less time with the radio medium because more services are causing fragmentation.
 

 
Andy Robertson says radio has “something going for it that other media don’t,” and that’s cars. In prime time, many people are listening to the radio in their cars, and that is a big revenue earner for commercial radio. “The big challenge for radio in the long term is to keep its audience tuned in,” reports Robertson
 
See ABC TV’s full report here.

Graphic from the research study below.
 

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