YouTube #1 for Music Listening Among Teens; Radio Still #1 for Music Discovery

[Woochifer]

Interesting findings from a new Nielson survey of teenage music listening habits.

Music Discovery Still Dominated by Radio, Says Nielsen Music 360 Report

YouTube Is The New Teenage Music Library
The most relevant finding IMO is that YouTube is now the #1 source for music listening among teenagers. Higher than radio, higher than CDs, higher than digital downloads, higher than other internet audio streaming. Doesn't surprise me that a large number of teenagers would use YouTube for their everyday listening. It's somewhat surprising though that YouTube outpaces all other music sources.

Speaking from experience, YouTube has become my go-to source if I'm trying to track down an obscure or long-lost song. Given that I listen to a lot of dance remixes and alternate takes, most of the tracks I'm interested in are out-of-print in physical format and unavailable in digital format, except through file sharing sites (which I tend to avoid because of MPAA crackdowns and the volume of malware that gets posted online), YouTube has been a great resource. Aside from music videos, YouTube hosts a huge library of audio-only clips, so I've been able to find a lot of music that I had otherwise been unable to find through retailers or online vendors.

Now, what's the downside of this. Simple. YouTube clips sound like crap ... much worse than 128k MP3s. It's great that I have found a lot of rare tracks that I had been trying to locate for years, but it's a bummer that I'm limited to audio quality that sounds like a bad cellular call. There are sites out there that will create MP3 files from YouTube links, but the sound quality is so bad that I will only do this if the tracks are otherwise impossible to find.

If YouTube is what teens now use as their primary way of listening to music, then we have truly regressed back to the pre-CD Walkman era, when those horrific sounding pre-recorded cassettes dominated.

Long Live Radio
While teenagers listen to music on YouTube, they overwhelmingly use radio to discover new music with 48% of responses (next on the list was friends/relatives with just 10%). Considering how the radio industry has consolidated into just a handful of gigantic conglomerates, centralized playlists into bland and narrow formats, and largely stripped away the connection to local communities that once made radio so vital, I'm actually more surprised that radio remains a dominant force in how teens discover new music. And this is in an era where listeners have an expanding universe of streaming audio options with any number of formats and ways of filtering the playlists.

To me, this indicates that old habits have not died off, despite technology's best efforts. To an extent, it looks like listeners want some form of curation that steers them to certain music. This is really what's lacking with most internet audio options -- it's a huge universe of options, but with very little curation or guidance.

Yes, Teens Buy Music
Despite all of the hype about how the CD is dead, a surprising 36% of teens have bought a CD over the past year, and 51% have bought a digital download. I would have expected things to be even more skewed.

Overall, very interesting patterns emerging. Some habits have shifted very abruptly (I would doubt that many people listened to music on YouTube just a few years ago), while others have stubbornly held up.

[Enochrome]

You Tube is # 1 cause it's easy. People want something easier that they don't have to think about. I have a friend who likes to talk audiophile jabber with me, and he reads stereophile and loves all things Rega, and when I asked what he listens to music with he said " Audio Engines and You Tube". Which I thought at first what the hell? and then I thought why did he even bother buying the Audio Engines. Then I realized it is most likely a cost thing, You Tube is free.

Over the air Radio sucks.

[Smokey]

Yes, Teens Buy Music
Despite all of the hype about how the CD is dead, a surprising 36% of teens have bought a CD over the past year, and 51% have bought a digital download. I would have expected things to be even more skewed.

Those numbers tell me that Youtube being number 1 msuic source for teens might be slightly overblown. May be teens sample music on Youtube to see whether they like a song/album or not before buying it digitally or on CD. As you said sound quality on YouTube is pretty bad and can't imagine anybody including teens listen to it primarily as a music source.

[Woochifer]

You Tube is # 1 cause it's easy. People want something easier that they don't have to think about. I have a friend who likes to talk audiophile jabber with me, and he reads stereophile and loves all things Rega, and when I asked what he listens to music with he said " Audio Engines and You Tube". Which I thought at first what the hell? and then I thought why did he even bother buying the Audio Engines. Then I realized it is most likely a cost thing, You Tube is free.

YouTube is also everywhere. PCs, tablets, smartphones, iPods, video game consoles, Blu-ray players, and even my Directv receiver are all connected to YouTube. Even though the YouTube interface looks like the usual chaotic mess from Google, it does have one key feature -- playlists. You can either setup your own playlists, or subscribe to someone else's profile, and you now have all your favorite songs collected together and accessible whenever you're connected.

On the audio side, portability won out over ultimate sound quality a long time ago with the mainstream market. We saw this when cassettes began outselling LPs shortly after the introduction of the Walkman. And we saw it again when the iPod sales alone grew to a point where they more than tripled the revenues for the entire home audio component industry. Even at home, I will often opt to stream songs using playlists on my PS3 (connected via wi-fi to my computer), rather than hunt through my CD collection and load up individual albums one at a time.

Now, instead of having your music collection in your pocket (remember when that was such a revolutionary concept?), it's more about wirelessly streaming songs off of the millions of uploaded song files, which increasingly get posted onto YouTube.

Over the air Radio sucks.

Yep, but it sadly remains the key gatekeeper for how listeners discover new music. Internet music sites, for the most part, are largely a hodgepodge of automated jukeboxes, with little curation or focus that can help propel sales for newer music. The dumbed down formats and narrow playlists on radio have contributed to the music industry's downfall, because they are no longer a medium for developing an audience for new music. With the music industry also tightening up their artist rosters and taking few if any chances with new cutting edge music, there's not a whole lot of new releases for radio PDs to choose from anyway.

Those numbers tell me that Youtube being number 1 msuic source for teens might be slightly overblown. May be teens sample music on Youtube to see whether they like a song/album or not before buying it digitally or on CD.

Actually, teens are still discovering music primarily via the radio. I think radio's main strength is that it maintains a connection to the audience, and (with top 40 or urban hit formats at least) will adjust their playlists based on what the audience wants to hear, even if that means playing the same song twice every hour. Internet music sites fixate on having broad and lengthy playlists to a point that they lose sight of what the teen listening audience might want to hear right this minute.

YouTube is simply the #1 way by which teens consume music. As mentioned above, YouTube is everywhere and with the proliferation of smartphones, more teens are now connected everywhere all the time. While I remain skeptical of video viewing on smartphones, I think streaming audio is most definitely a tidal shift in the making.

While a lot of people still think of YouTube as a video site, it has also become the primary depository for music files over the last few years. YouTube has become a go-to music site simply because that's where the songs are. You don't have to hassle with downloads or torrent clients or malware or threats from the MPAA -- you search for a song and it's there. Plus, if you want to view the music video, it's there too.

As you said sound quality on YouTube is pretty bad and can't imagine anybody including teens listen to it primarily as a music source.

Once you setup your playlists (whether your own or somebody else's), then YouTube functions similarly to a MP3 player whenever you're using a smartphone or other connected device. Sound quality's horrible, but when have most teens ever cared about sound quality? Certainly not when they were buying pre-recorded cassettes to play on their Walkmans.

[E-Stat]

Interesting findings from a new Nielson survey of teenage music listening habits.

Like internet radio, I've always used it as a sampler vehicle - but as you indicated, most certainly not the final medium. Actual videos of concerts or recordings can also shed light on the production - if not the sound quality itself.

[Smokey]

Sound quality's horrible, but when have most teens ever cared about sound quality? Certainly not when they were buying pre-recorded cassettes to play on their Walkmans.

Well, you care about sound quality, but you still listen to Youtube

Saying most teens don't care about sound quality might be using a too big of a brush. I think they can distinguish between lo-fi and hi-fi like when we were teenagers, and the numbers-36% of teens buying CD and 51% buying digital download-might be an indication of that.

My cellphone is also an MP3 player (LG800) and with right headphone and hi bit MP3, the sound qualty is pretty darn good. So can't imagine teens not distinguising between high quality digital downloads and Youtube as to not care about the sound quality.

[Woochifer]

Well, you care about sound quality, but you still listen to Youtube

I care about music first and foremost. If I can't find it anywhere else, then I will listen to it where I can find it.

Saying most teens don't care about sound quality might be using a too big of a brush. I think they can distinguish between lo-fi and hi-fi like when we were teenagers,

Sure, they can distinguish, but does that mean that they care enough to sacrifice portability and convenience?

When I was a teen, I bought LPs and dubbed them onto high quality cassettes for playback on my Walkman and car stereo. But, nearly all of my friends, even those whose parents had a decent audio system at home, bought pre-recorded cassettes, which almost uniformly sounded horrible. They just wanted the convenience and instant gratification of popping the tape into their car player or Walkman.

And by the time CDs began catching on, cassettes were far outselling LPs. And even during the LP's heyday, most of them were played back on portable record changers or all-in-one systems, not turntables connected to component-based systems.

and the numbers-36% of teens buying CD and 51% buying digital download-might be an indication of that.

Or simply a sign of continuing old habits, as indicated by the large numbers of teens that listen to radio.

My cellphone is also an MP3 player (LG800) and with right headphone and hi bit MP3, the sound qualty is pretty darn good. So can't imagine teens not distinguising between high quality digital downloads and Youtube as to not care about the sound quality.

Again, where do I say that teens cannot "distinguish" sound quality? I'm simply saying that most teens don't care, certainly not if more convenient alternatives are available. If a teen is carrying a smartphone or iPod touch, the music selections on YouTube free them from having to create/download and manage MP3 files, since they can now wirelessly stream their playlists. For the mainstream market, convenience and portability are the priorities, and YouTube plays right into that with rising smartphone usage.

[Mr Peabody]

Services like Pandora and Iheart radio are pretty good for focus where you can type in an artist and it will play tracks from that artist and similar artists.

I'm still in the dark ages. I will search on YouTube to hear an entire track or two off an album to see if the CD is worth buying. I nearly paniced when I read downloads were outselling actual CD's .

Sound quality still matters to me, I enjoy sitting between the speakers and being engaged in the music.

[winston]

listening to music on YouTube, is not really about SQ!! IMHO most people from all over the world, go to (YouTube) to discover the (oldest and newest, Music & Video) because YouTube is the place to find and discover almost anything Music.... (and as Mr Pea, mentioned "to see if its worth buying") which is overly important

EX... my youngest, he's into the Flute, Clarinet, & Trumpet... a few weeks ago I was spinning "Herbie Mann" the Memphis underground CD, when the (battle hymn of the republic) started playing, he wanted to know who was moving all the air through that Flute I told him, and he said Herbie Mann?? he was on YouTube within seconds... getting to know the man better