Consumers prefer to be alone with audio, but social opportunities abound

Gone are the days when families huddled in the living room to listen to a radio broadcast. Cars and mobile phones — the latter to a much larger extent — have enabled and encouraged solitary audio consumption. However, that does not mean that audio has become devoid of social experiences or that social experiences have become devoid of audio. Instead, the nature of those social experiences has become further intermediated by technology, making consumer attention all the more important.

With so much content competing for consumers' attention, it is not enough to just give consumers ways to spend their limited resources (time and money). Audio companies must also give consumers reasons to do so. Thus, to grow the audio market, knowing the reasons consumers choose one format over another — whether in a solitary, social, or parasocial environment — is key to driving growth.

The new MIDiA report, “Audio psychographics: Understanding why people listen”, finds that preferences for listening alone shift most with music and podcasts. Respondents are more than twice as likely to listen to podcasts alone than to listen when with friends. While not as dramatic, they are also slightly more likely to listen to music alone than with friends. That is not to say that consumers are in solitude when they listen to these formats. Rather, consumers approach music and podcasts with different social motivations.

While the majority of consumers turn to music when alone, they also turn to music when with friends. Music is arguably the most universal audio format due to its applicability across behaviours, moods, and activities –– so its function as a social and solitary format makes sense. For example, consumers typically do not opt for a podcast or an audiobook at a BBQ, but music is widely considered an integral part of the experience.  Listening to music is also a natural background activity for common solitary behaviours such as  working or studying. However, 47% of respondents turn to other audio formats when with friends (or do not listen to audio at all),demonstrating that there is still room for music to be more social.

With podcasts, consumer preference for listening with friends is one of the lowest of all formats (5%), indicating that podcast listening is not a very social activity.. However, many listeners form parasocial relationships with podcast hosts, and some of the best podcasts make listeners feel as if they are part of a conversation.. Listener engagement features, like comments, question submissions, and call-ins, can deepen that connection, while in-person recordings are turning podcasts into social events.

As opportunities to make audio more social — both when consumers are alone and also when they are with friends — proliferate, knowing the moods and motivations of consumers in these listening contexts becomes even more important. When consumers need a mood boost, where do they turn? How about when they want to relax? To learn more about why consumers seek out certain audio formats and what that means for the future of audio, download MIDiA’s new report here.

If you are not a client but would like to learn about how you can access this report, please reach out to enquiries@midiaresearch.com.