A breakdown of stateside audience overlap between traditional radio and Spotify’s ad-supported tier. Photo Credit: Edison Research at SSRS

Where do fans go when they don’t want to pay for premium audio? AM/FM radio, which, far from dying off, currently boasts a U.S. audience share in excess of 10 times larger than that attributable to Spotify’s ad-supported tier.

This and other significant findings come from Edison’s newly released Q2 2026 “Share of Ear” report, which “surveys 4,000 Americans annually.”

At the top level, following considerable paid streaming growth in established markets including the U.S., Spotify’s ad-supported userbase is smaller, “skews low income,” and “is far less likely to work full-time,” according to the resource.

The takeaways are, of course, relative. Regarding the “smaller” descriptor, notwithstanding the DSP’s loosened free tier restrictions, 22% of overall Spotify listening time (for those between the ages of 25 and 54, to be specific) is spent on ad-supported at present, compared to 53% back in 2017, the report shows.

Running with the numbers, despite advertisers’ perception to the contrary, AM/FM radio is said to boast a 62% ad-supported audience share among Americans age 18 and over – against, in keeping with the initially mentioned stat, closer to 6% for Spotify’s “downscale and very small” ad-supported share.

(Technically, this pertains to “AM/FM radio’s persons 18+ share of ad-supported audio” on the “audience share” front. However, in-graphic text also describes 62% as the “actual share of ad-supported audio time spent among persons 18+.”)

Back to the previously noted household income side, traditional radio reportedly has an across-the-board lead in the same 18+ “ad-supported audio time spent” category, referring to a 61% share for under $50,000 (versus 8% for Spotify), 63% for $50,001 to $99,000 (5% for Spotify), and 62% for $100,000+ (4% for Spotify).

(A subscription-minded YouTube Music fared worse than that, though the report doesn’t appear to contain percentages for YouTube proper, where music and music content are major draws.)

Like with just about every music-consumption report, methodology and presentation particulars are worth highlighting here.

First, there are plenty of on-demand listening options today; each platform is classified separately in the report, and if added together, the percentages stack up better against the all-encompassing AM/FM total.

More pressingly, even when accessed on streaming services, podcasts are grouped in a category of their own in the income breakdown, with a 22% ad-supported listening share in the first two brackets and 23% in the third. To state the obvious, attributing the percentages to the appropriate platforms would increase their shares.

In any event, as framed in the report, vast music catalog and numerous features aside, free on-demand listening has a ways to go before closing the gap with traditional radio.

This ties back to AM/FM’s easy-to-overlook positioning, to the tune of reaching the vast majority of Americans (and remaining similarly relevant in a number of other nations) on a weekly basis. Will the longstanding reality change during the approaching years?

Time will tell. On one hand, logic suggests that digital’s growing prevalence, in coordination with tech adoption generally, has the potential to fuel a shift. On the other hand, the same thing was true a decade ago, and as underscored by the above data, said shift has yet to materialize – at least from the perspective of streaming’s replacing AM/FM altogether.