Radio's Future & Tech: What Music Execs Need to Know

When Zach Top made his debut on airwaves in 2021 with “Sounds Like the Radio,” the song took listeners “back [to] ’94, you know.”

Radio in that era was a different animal — more than 90% of American adults used a clock radio to start their day, and the biggest competitor for in-car listening was the factory-installed CD player.

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Today’s landscape is less favorable for over-the-air radio. More than 80% of the population now uses a smart phone as the alarm, and over 25% of listeners don’t have a single AM/FM radio in their home, according to Michigan-based Jacobs Media’s 22nd annual TechSurvey 2026. Additionally, during their commutes, drivers have satellite radio, audiobooks and streaming apps among numerous non-radio options that didn’t even exist back in ‘94.

The TechSurvey, released in an April 24 webinar, suggests that even stations’ most ardent fans will soon be tuning in to the radio more on other devices than on AM/FM hardware. Listening to Zach Top — or Morgan Wallen or Ella Langle y or anyone else — is a different experience on those devices than on a traditional radio, and programmers will want to adjust their stations to take advantage of consumers’ behavior as they continue to move to those platforms. How will that change broadcasters’ approach?

“That’s kind of the holy-grail question,” says Jacobs Media president and founder Fred Jacobs .

The TechSurvey, a study drawn from people in station databases, measures the listening habits and opinions of radio’s most committed customers across all formats. (The study does not reflect casual listeners). It demonstrates that those super-users still listen to their favorite AM/FM stations 54% of the time on a radio. But 44% of the time, they access those stations through other sources, including mobile phones, PCs or smart speakers such as Alexa. That 10% difference between AM/FM tuners and other options is far smaller than the 71% spread in 2013. Based on the trend line, it’s likely that the competing devices will surpass traditional AM/FM listening in just two to three years. How successfully broadcast executives handle that flip will determine the medium’s future and have a large impact on the artists and labels who supply the music stations with a big chunk of their content.

The features of those alternate gadgets — as well as the environment in which they’re used — shape the way listeners engage with the medium. During rush hour in the car, where most radio tune-in occurs, preset buttons allow the commuter to switch stations easily. To maximize impact, programmers attempt to keep as many drivers’ attention as possible with engaging content to build the largest possible audience during a commute that lasts, on average, less than 30 minutes.

The same customer, listening at work or home, is less likely to change the channel while using the radio as background for other activities. In that setting, programmers generally benefit by providing content that is steadier, more reliable and less obtrusive, attempting to keep the listener’s engagement as long as possible.

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Balancing those competing data points — the size of the cumulative audience versus the time spent listening — is the challenge for radio decision-makers, who may need to tweak their approaches as the audience shifts its habits. They could alter the size of playlists, the frequency of an individual title’s repetition, the size of commercial breaks or the amount of disc jockey conversation as the audience moves to different devices. And those decisions come as modern in-car dashboards feature increasingly elaborate infotainment systems that further threaten to deflate listenership in the space where radio has long dominated.

“Listening in the car to a regular AM/FM radio is still the No. 1 way that people listen to their favorite radio stations,” Jacobs says. “But the more that cars become connected, and the more that cars allow you to pair your phone or they have embedded apps on their home screens, the more pressure that puts on radio broadcasters to win the war.”

Radio’s future is further complicated by the audience itself, according to this year’s TechSurvey. The average age of the current P1 listener is 58.4 years (the country format, at an average 57.1 among its most enthusiastic supporters, is only slightly younger than radio as a whole). As recently as 2023, radio’s P1s averaged 55.5 — the listener base increased by three years in that short window. That means stations are not cultivating superfans in younger demos fast enough to replace older fans as they disappear.

It represents an “epic fail,” Jacobs says, noting that broadcasters have been so devoted to the 25-54 demographic that they are neither catering to the dominant older segment of their audience nor cultivating the younger listeners who need to come on board to keep radio thriving.

“We have not spent any energy, time or money on people, really, under the age of 25,” Jacobs laments. “Teens were [formerly] an integral part of radio listening and also radio sales. Those were the people discovering the new music, and those were the people who were genuinely excited about what was going on. Most radio stations haven’t included them in the strategic mix now for decades.”

The extreme demos — consumers under 25 and over 55 — may be key to radio’s future strength, presenting a conundrum since both have different engagement profiles. A sizable chunk of the P1 listeners who are older than the medium’s 58-year average age are retired and thus commuting less, reducing their in-car listening. Since radio is a life-long habit, they’re increasingly tuning in via Alexa, Google Home or their computer, and listening for longer stretches.

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The younger demos, whose media habits are shaped primarily by their use of smart phones, are prone to shorter listening occurrences, which would seem to require a different programming approach. Focusing on the older base would create the best short-term Nielsen ratings, though their age necessarily means their numbers will dwindle in the approaching decade. Engaging youth would likely not pay off in a sizable increase in those demos for a number of years, if at all.

“Radio as an industry has not adjusted to the demographic realities,” Jacobs says. “That’s why you begin to start looking at data like this and going, ‘Whoa!’ This thing is becoming a really difficult challenge with each passing year as the audience ages out.”

One surprising source of optimism might come with the development of the smart TV. Still relatively new, the device is used only 2% of the time by radio’s strongest consumers, but it’s particularly popular among Gen Z. It might be a method in which stations are able to groom the youngest part of the audience to become the future core.

Thus, to quote Zach Top, it “sounds like the radio” would benefit from catering to the aging part of its audience, which is likely to engage for longer periods of time as it increasingly stays home, while simultaneously building its younger segment, which could be listening longer if it discovers radio through its use of smart TV.

The rules around media ownership are likely to be relaxed, Jacobs notes, and he suggests that chains that typically operate five or six outlets in a particular market would benefit from having one of its stations devoted to 55+ demos and another focused on 12-24.

“You need to think,” Jacobs says, “about both things at the same time.”

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/pro/radios-future-shaped-by-tech-what-execs-should-know/)._