Do radio listeners care whether a station plays AI-created music? Definitely.
Jacobs Media asked about AI on the radio as part of its annual Techsurvey, which analyzes answers from listeners of 506 commercial stations in the United States. Most respondents are “core radio listeners” and members of those radio stations’ email databases.
Our Randy Stine reported on this recently: “There are some clear indications … that radio listeners are giving AI-created songs the stink eye.”
He wrote that the survey asked if participants would listen to radio stations playing AI-created music, and their answer was a resounding no.
“Nearly three-fourths of the respondents indicated that hearing AI-generated music on their favorite station would be a ‘deal-breaker.’”
Jacobs says that AI use is growing but that the “alarm rate” remains high. Perhaps counterintuitively, Gen Z gave the biggest negative response, as 81% indicated that they have a major problem with AI music.
With iHeartMedia having made headlines with its “Guaranteed Human” pledge, Jacobs tested the phrase up against three other positioners and found that it resonated with six in 10 core radio listeners, especially with women.
Yet the results also showed that the adoption of AI by respondents is increasing, with nearly 30% using it weekly for things tasks at school and work; and another 32% said they use AI occasionally. In all, AI usage has tripled within two years.
Millennials are buying in at the fastest rate at 37%, while Gen Z appears the most startled by the growing reliance on AI. The survey asked respondents if there was “at least some alarm” over AI’s rapid growth, and the zoomers overwhelmingly, at 81%, said yes.
“Women are clearly more flipped out over AI than our men, and interestingly, younger people are as well,” Fred Jacobs said during a webinar about the survey.
Jacobs believes Gen Z is upset, in part, “because it seems like every article that’s written talks about how Gen Z is going to pay the price for AI, and all these entry-level jobs are going to disappear. (Gen Z) is reading these articles — or they’re actually feeling the actual pain of what is going on with AI, and their jobs,” Jacobs said.
AI is just one interesting angle of the Techsurvey, which explores key trends in the social, mobile and “connected car” spaces.
The results reinforce the importance of localism, personalities and visuals in the car dashboard, and they remind us that listeners put great value on radio being free. Jacobs also documents the continued shift in how radio users actually listen, with more and more of them shifting to digital platforms to access their stations.
You can read Randy’s four-part wrapup here. Or dig into it more deeply on the Jacobs Media website.
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