YouTube gets the most US listeners in the evening whilst midday is the peak time for podcast listening according to a recent blog post by Edison Research. They show which dayparts have the most minutes of listening from each audio platform. In broadcast programming, dayparting is the practice of dividing the broadcast day into several parts, in which a different type of radio programming or television show appropriate for that time period is aired. Edison Research’s Share of Ear dataset collects listening data of US consumers aged 13+ continuously through the day, allowing them to analyse how listening habits differ by daypart.
The graphic below shows which daypart has the highest average listening time for each audio platform measured in Share of Ear (not which audio platform rules that daypart). It might not be immediately clear that these standard dayparts do not all have the same number of hours: some have four hours and some have five. We have taken this into consideration, so the calculations below reflect average listening minutes per hour in each daypart.
AM/FM Radio usage peaks is mornings, also known as “morning drive time” (6am-10am). Radio has a historical focus on strong morning shows and many radio listeners have a lifelong habit of listening in the morning whether at home starting the day or driving to work or school.
The one type of audio that sees its strongest daypart in the evening (7pm-Midnight) is listening to music on YouTube. During a time of day when there has historically been an audio consumption drop, as television viewing takes over, this form of music-video entertainment is used more in the evenings than any other time of day, showing what a unique form of consumption YouTube for music makes. Whether people putting YouTube on their Smart TVs or phones or use it as background to other activities or perhaps actively watching is yet to be found out.
Many audio types see their peak listening in the midday hours (10am-3pm). Audiobooks, owned music, podcasts, SiriusXM, and streaming all have middays as the daypart with the greatest amount of average listening. SiriusXM might come as a bit of a surprise here, as so much of its image is dominated by Howard Stern and other morning offerings. But the lure of commercial-free music leads many SiriusXM users to report long spans of listening through the midday hours.
Afternoons, or “PM Drive Time” (3pm-7pm), is when Music Channels on TV have the most listening. The post goes on to note that, ‘what we are looking at here is each platform on its own, and the proportion of listening during each daypart for that platform. This is not looking at the dayparts and ranking each platform’s listening during that daypart.’
