Canadians playing more music, driven by smartphones and streaming: Nielsen

TORONTO – Blasting songs through a smartphone is becoming an increasingly popular habit for Canadian music fans.

A new survey by Nielsen Music Canada found that about 53 per cent of listeners said they play their favourite tunes on their phone in a typical week.

That represents growth of 19 percentage points from a year ago, driven in part by the popularity of streaming music services.

The data comes as part of Nielsen’s broader study of listening habits in its annual “Canada Music 360” survey.

Among other key findings, the survey showed that audiences are spending more time with music.

On average, respondents said they played 32 hours of music weekly, about eight hours more than last year.

Other shifts offered a sign of the times.

Fewer respondents said they played digital music from a downloaded collection. The dip was a slight three percentage points to 38 per cent, but it reflects sales declines that have affected digital retailers like Apple’s iTunes.

Only a quarter of Canadian respondents said they played a compact disc in a typical week.

But Nielsen found 64 per cent of respondents still tuned into a terrestrial radio station in the early part of this year, a small increase of three percentage points from last year.

Nielsen conducted the online survey of about 1,300 adults between March 22 and 28.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

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