• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, March 31, 2008

The annual "Infinite Dial 2008: Radio's Digital Platforms" by Arbitron and Edison Media Research, estimates that 33 million Americans age 12 or older listen to a radio station over the Internet during an average week, up from 29 million listeners one year ago.  There is also a strong connection between online radio listening and social networking sites according to the study.

The complete study also reports that:

• Thirteen percent of Americans age 12 or older (an estimated 33 million people) listened to online radio in the previous week, an increase of two percentage points from January 2007
• Twenty four percent of all Americans age 12 or older have a profile on a social networking Web site such as MySpace, Facebook or Linked-In
• 63 percent of Online radio listeners have a profile on sites such as those mentioned above
• One-third of online radio listeners with a social network profile visit their social networking site nearly every day or several times per day
• The top social networking Web sites among online radio listeners are MySpace and the business professional networking service Linked-In
• Twenty-eight percent of online radio listeners have a MySpace page, while 24 percent have a profile on Linked-In

Diane Williams, senior analyst, custom research for Arbitron, says. "... We found that Online radio listeners are more than one and half times more likely to have a profile on a social networking site as compared to average Americans and that they tend to be power-users, with one-third of online radio listeners logging on to their social networking site nearly every day or even multiple times per day."

The final report, to be released in April 2008, will detail the latest data on the general online radio listening universe and will explore how consumers interact and explore radio and all of its digital platforms, says Arbitron.

For more information, please visit Arbitron here.