Terrestrial radio’s share of unique Internet radio visitors is at a new high of 38.5%, up from 32% a year ago.
That’s according to JP Morgan analysts, who say the number of unique visitors to Net radio sites overall fell for the first time since the company started tracking them, down 3% from a year ago to about 52 million; that decline was driven by a drop in visitors to “pure play Internet operator” sites of 12%.
But terrestrial radio operators of online radio content are facing difficult unique visitor comparisons over the next few months, the analysts said.
“Just as the growth for the pure play Internet operators faced challenging comparisons vs. last year and have experienced sequential declines the last few months, we expect the terrestrial operators to face difficult comparisons in the next few months, when unique visitors totaled about 22 million, near their highs.”
Clear Channel now claims a 19% share of all unique visitors to Internet radio.