Study: “Sea change” in the way NZ consumes music, media

A new survey into the way New Zealanders consume music and media has shown a growing gap between young and older users.

The gap is significant enough for New Zealand on Air, the Government funding body that decides content on radio and TV, to signal changes to what it considers priorities in doling out its money.

NZoA commissioned the Where Are The Audiences 2016 study, which was conducted by Glasshouse Consulting. It surveyed 1,400 New Zealanders aged 15+ in April and May this year about what music and media they had consumed the day before they were interviewed. The study is a follow-up to one conducted in 2014, and found a strong shift in consumption had taken place since.

In what the report describes as a “sea change”, more New Zealanders listen to music via streaming (33% compared to 23% in 2014) than CDs or iPods (27% in 2016 compared to 38% two years ago.

This trend is especially marked among younger New Zealanders – six in ten (59%) stream music daily compared to four in ten (39%) who listen to CDs/iPods.. The most popular streaming services are YouTube (20% daily reach) and Spotify (13%), followed by newer entrant Apple Music (5%).

More consumers are using streaming services to find new music, now 47% up from 36%. But as a whole, most Kiwis (61%) still rely on radio – on air and online – as their source of discovering new music, while word of mouth is also important at 60%. Listening to online international radio is 6% for 15 to 39 year olds, and just 2% for those over 40%.

Radio remained resilient in the past two years while consumption of media changed. “While there has been a decline in daily radio audiences overall, the daily reach of individual stations is relatively stable since 2014,” according to the report.

“In addition online radio, both NZ and overseas, has not grown significantly since 2014. This may be due to the growth in use of music streaming sites such as YouTube and Spotify. iHeartRadio continues to reach 2% of New Zealanders each day.”

But TV remains a major past-time, with 2.5 hours a day spent on watching linear TV, compared to 1.5 hours on broadcast radio a day. It’s 81% for those aged 45 and over, and 63% for the 15 to 39 year olds. It was clear where the younger Kiwis are spending their time when moving away from TV. The demographic spends 72% of time on online video and 22% for the over-40s.

Of the difference in time spent by the 15 to 39 year olds and the over 40s, it was 50% to 66% for live radio, 59% to 12% for music online and streamed music, and 39% to 19% for music CDs and iPods.

The percentages are marked for SVODs (streaming videos on demand) where it is 38% to 10%. Broken down, it’s 25% to 11% for New Zealand On Demand, 29% to 7% for New Zealand based SVODs as Netflix and Lightbox, and 24% to 5% for those accessing overseas SVODs like the US version of Netflix and Hula.

In terms of reach, linear TV gets to nine in 10 of the population, radio is eight in 10, YouTube and Facebook over six in 10 and SVODs are two in 10.

NZoA Chief Executive Jane Wrightson says that a result of survey findings, the association will be “diversifying our investments” and that its funding structure would be “more flexible and responsive to ongoing change.”

While funding will shift slightly to cater for audiences that have taken up online videos and streaming, traditional TV and radio remained the most popular (and where users stayed the longest) and hence would continue to be beneficiaries.

Wrightson added, “While the results show increasing erosion of traditional media strongholds, these platforms remain for the moment where the biggest audiences are, and for the longest periods of time. Our challenge as a funder is to ensure local content is wherever the audiences are – so we are carefully diversifying our investments.”

The full report is available at www.nzonair.govt.nz/researchalong with a series of infographic snapshots.