What do you listen to?

Each morning, I awake to the clock radio detailing the latest rantings of sports related topics from the national syndicate of ESPNRadio. As I take my children to school, I often continue to listen to the sport scores, latest coaching changes, and on-air jockeys discussing their opinions about anything and everything sports related. Once at the office, I point my web browser to espnradio.com and launch a streaming radio session that lingers for most of the day as background audio. After three in the afternoon, I discontinue the espnradio.com stream and open a streaming audio feed from the Dallas ESPNradio affiliate to listen to a DFW sports radio show hosted by a Fort Worth Star-Telegram sports writer. When I leave the office at 5:30pm, my media intake is mostly local television, except for the half hour I walk. During my walking ritual, I pull out my MP3 player and listen to a business podcast I've downloaded on the topic of effective management.

As one might gather from this diary of my listening habits, I don't listen to much music any more. The reality is that I have phases or fads, when my primary media intake is music versus sports talk. Since the NFL season is drawing to a close, and I'm not the biggest basketball fan (until March Madness begins), I'll start reverting back to actual music sources. Of course since my children are now at the age of developing their own musical tastes (although I'm not convinced bubblegum pop is an actual musical genre), and my wife isn't the biggest fan of sports talk, often times car rides have musical accompaniment.

This discussion about listening habits led me to question what do people listen to. Not so much musical styling, but what devices are preferred to deliver audio content. So after a handful of Google searches, I gathered the following numbers.

• 97% of US Consumers own and listen to traditional AM/FM radios in their vehicles
• 25% of US Consumers own MP3 player equipment for their automobiles
• 1 in 5 Americans over the age of 12 now own a portable MP3 player
• It's estimated that in 2006 13.6 million MP3 units were purchased by Americans
• The average person who downloads music to their MP3 player listens to 12 hours a week
• Forbes Magazine projected that 9 million people would listen to a podcast in 2006
• In March 2006, satellite radio services had an estimated 15 million subscribers
• In January 2007, Steve Jobs said that iTunes sells 5 million songs a day
• In 2002, a third of Americans indicated they'd listen to radio over the Internet, but only 5% said they'd listen within the last week
• Of music stored on the average person's MP3 player, 44% is ripped from the owner's personal CD collection and 25% is from a fee-based music source like iTunes

Here are some conclusions I've drawn from these figures. First, individuals driving are prone to listen to the radio over MP3 devices. Second, individuals that use their computers as an audio source, play locally stored music files over streaming media over the Internet.

I'm curious if or when will podcasts become the preferred source for information distribution in a audio format? When will music CDs stop being manufactured because most folks will download the music rather than purchase a CD? Will personal music devices ever replace the traditional AM/FM radio in vehicles?