The AM-FM radio business is being discussed in a mailing list I’m on, but my mail server has a spam sphincter that won’t allow linky emails to go out, no matter how non-spammy they might be. So I’m posting some of what I’m trying to say here, so I can point to it.

Here is Pew from 2023.

Here is Nielsen, via Radio World, same year.

For another angle on this, look at the ratings at Radio Online. In those, public radio stations are mostly even, or gaining. I’ll visit that below.

Edison Research says AM-FM radio’s share-of-ear was 34% in 2023, down from 50% in 2014.

This Edison Research report (supporting Amazon Ads) in 2023 says streaming audio at that time had a 40% share of total audio time among U.S. adults, which was up ~160% in ten years.

And this Pew fact sheet has more numbers, some of them from Edison.

Meanwhile public radio listening has fallen. But its shares have not. For most of the listed stations, they’ve gone up a bit. This says the overall listening pie is smaller.

At best AM-FM radio (and over-the-air television) are what investors call distressed assets. They’re making money and not going away soon, but there is no significant new investment in plant, or anything, and lots of cost cutting.

But people are not listening less to audio. The opportunities, then, are in other forms of listening, all in the digital world.