Internet Radio Nears Eclipse of AM/FM

Yup. It's finally happening: Internet radio listeners are about to eclipse AM/FM radio listeners, per new research from the NPD Group.

"Since 2009, the percentage of Pandora users who listened to an AM/FM radio declined by 10 percentage points. During the same period, CD listening fell 21 percentage points, while listening to digital music files on portable music players also dropped 21 points."

By comparison, over the last three months half of all U.S. Internet users (96 million) streamed their music via services and apps like Pandora (37%) and on-demand sites like YouTube and Spotify (36%).

NPD said 34% of Pandora listeners use the service while driving in their car, making an especially deep cut into the traditional drive-time commuter demographic that was once AM/FM radio's golden goose. (Too bad Pandora's suing their ASCAP artists (via ASCAP) for lower royalty rates.)

And in case you missed it, someone was kind enough to leak this month that MySpace is jumping on the bandwagon of music streaming. That's in addition to iTunes starting up their own music streaming service in early 2013. It should be a very interesting year ahead in Music Streaming Land.

Read More on NPD Study @ PC Mag...Read More on NPD Study @ HuffPost...Read More on MySpace Leak @ Business Insider...Read More on iTunes' Streaming @ Bloomberg...