Males Lead in Streaming Media Use

The typical US streaming media consumer is a 36-year-old white male who lives in the Midwest (Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, or Oklahoma) has completed some college education, and earns between $50,000 and $75,000, according to a survey by MeasureCast and Harris Interactive.

Of the nearly 10,000 interviews completed for the research, 16 percent of the respondents qualified as active streaming consumers — meaning they watched streaming video or listened to streaming audio for at least one hour in the previous 30 days. Twenty percent of this group watch or listen to streaming media every day. More than half (57 percent) use the medium a few times per week. The study also found overall, men (20 percent) are more likely to qualify as active streaming media users than women (12 percent).

The study also found that the typical streaming media consumer uses the Internet for at least eight hours a week, and that is more likely to use broadband technology (T1 lines or DSL) than typical Internet users, yet remains frustrated by today’s lack of bandwidth.

Additional findings of the study include:

• 67 percent of the online population is familiar with streaming media; men are more familiar than women (76 percent vs. 58 percent)
• People with household incomes of $50,000 or higher (71 percent) are significantly more familiar than people people with household incomes less than $50,000 (65 percent)
• The majority of active streaming media consumers will ‘definitely’ continue to use streaming media (75 percent)
• Of individuals who use streaming media every day, 92 percent are significantly more likely to ‘definitely’ continue using streaming than those who use streaming media weekly (75 percent) or monthly (55 percent)

To go along with the number of streaming media users, BRS Media fond in April of 2000 there were 3,537 radio stations broadcasting over the Net, up from 2,261 one year earlier. Half of the Webcasters are US or Canadian-based, with the healthiest growth coming from Internet-only outlets and international broadcasters.

To compare streaming media users with Internet users in general, Gartner Group found the average Internet users to be gender neutral with an income of $65,000.