Gen Y is switching off the radio, telly and stereo and turning to the internet for, well, just about everything.

Digital natives, they call them. Raised on the revolution of broadband, mobiles, MP3s and the user-generated content explosion, young audiences are fast tuning out of traditional media.

TV viewing audiences have fallen by almost 6 per cent in the past five years, with a dramatic 17 per cent drop for 16-39-year-olds, according to TV ratings group OzTAM.

Other research by Roy Morgan shows that TV isn't the only traditional player to suffer - Gen Y is spurning newspapers, magazines, radio and cinema in favour of the internet. But time spent online by 14-25-year-old "heavy internet users" doubled from 18 per cent in 2002 to 36 per cent in 2007.

Head of digital marketing agency Hothouse Interactive Simon van Wyk says audiences are skipping the traditional habits of free-to-air TV, live radio and CDs in favour of content they can access any time, anywhere - courtesy of the internet."

Media has changed. It used to mean channels Nine, Seven and Ten. Now media means your own website," he says.

Having seized control from the traditional content kings, young audiences are picking from a smorgasbord that includes timeshifting, podcasts and digital downloads of music, TV and movies.

And as an audience they are falling under the radar of marketers, with none of these new viewing habits being tracked by standard media measurements.

Mr van Wyk says TV networks are no longer the arbiters of quality entertainment, with viewers now flocking to the web for global content that can be downloaded way ahead of official release dates.

Beyond the reach of current ratings data, that on-demand activity is presenting a fuzzy picture for programmers and advertisers.

Media buyer Steve Allen, who runs Fusion Strategy, admits that TV has lost some of its audience to pirate downloaders, but believes lacklustre programming is also to blame. "When you don't have hits, to hang on to audiences is near impossible," he says. "Seven's hung on because it's got hits like Heroes and Brothers & Sisters ? but Nine's a basket case and Ten's only just behind them with their powerhouse Big Brother down by 13 per cent."

Mr van Wyk says the traditional approach of commercial producers creating hits and misses has been turned on its head. "In the past, if a record company decided a band was going to be a hit, they just marketed them and made sure they were on all the programs. When you don't have a Countdown that every teenager in Australia watches, things are going to change."

Social networking sites such as MySpace have now become a launching pad for emerging music artists who are finding their audiences online. US band Hawthorne Heights recently sold 500,000 copies of its debut album through its MySpace profile without the help of radio airplay or a major label. And the online success of breakthrough bands such as the Arctic Monkeys is now part of music industry legend.

Dion Appel, founder of young adult research group Lifelounge, says social networks are rivalling record labels by fast-tracking the popularity of new and niche artists."In the past it was a slower curve to popularity, now it's a much steeper curve," he says.

"People can access the music more readily and artists can build their fan base much faster."

Mr Appel says growing niche audiences are threatening the ability to measure the mass market and are reducing the value of "old media" measurements.

But what does this really mean? How do you measure a true Top 40, for example. Most young music listeners are online, refusing to pay for music but still plugged into a music scene of independent artists, thanks to sites such as MySpace.

Perhaps a No. 2 single really should be at No. 1, if you counted all the pirated copies of the song being downloaded from the net.

"The diversity in personal interests and choice has spread, therefore it's going to be very hard to rate a Top 40," Mr Appel concedes.

Sony BMG general manager of digital Gavin Parry recently told the Mobile Content World conference how complex the music industry has become, with physical sales down by 20 per cent, digital sales up by 38 per cent and 45 per cent of Australian digital music now mobile.

Digital marketer Simon van Wyk says media diversity and the "long tail" of content - a term coined by Wired magazine that refers to the plethora of sales niches available such as websites, blogs, pay tv channels, products etc - makes accurately measuring an audience an arduous task. "It's much more difficult to measure the market now because it's more spread out," he says. "There are 1500 sites in Australia that get more than 50,000 users per month. That was a good audience for a magazine once."

And he says the measurement industry isn't keeping pace with technophiles, especially when it comes to tracking new habits such as media multi-tasking. "They're way behind. How many people sit at home with one eye on the television and another on the laptop? There's a lot of that going on, and no one is measuring it."

In May, the ABC reported 1.7 million podcast downloads, 42 per cent of them for Radio National programs. ABC Radio National's talks program editor Joe Gelonesi says the current radio ratings system by Nielsen doesn't incorporate live and non-live streaming and podcasting, and it still uses manual diary entries to measure live radio.

"We don't know how much we're underestimating the audience by, because of these new ways of listening," he says. "I suspect it's by miles."

Researchers have been slow to track the early adopters, with Roy Morgan admitting it is only dipping its toes into the waters of new media.

Roy Morgan research director William Burlace admits that without massive audiences, there is little commercial incentive to monitor the new-tech waves of consumption. "We are in the early days of measuring downloading and podcasts and accessing TV on the mobile," he says. "Even though they are emerging technologies, they still don't deliver a mass audience for advertisers in the way traditional media do."

Mr Burlace says the fickle nature of consumer technology warrants a more conservative approach. "What you see with emerging technologies is a fair bubble of hype around everything. And you see this with great ideas that don't make it. We don't jump at everything that moves," he says.

THE challenge ahead of TV ratings group OzTAM is to expand TV ratings to include time-shifted viewing. CEO Kate Inglis-Clark admits changing the currency is a lengthy process because it requires consultation with TV networks and media buyers. "You don't move that sort of service at a whim," she says. "We need to make sure we have an accurate ratings service with a clearly defined and transparent methodology."

In the meantime, time-shifters, downloaders and those watching mobile or online TV aren't being captured, skewing the rating numbers and our yardstick of how popular a show really is.

Pay TV's sales arm, Multi Channel Network (MCn), says Australia is behind other markets in using technology to track changing viewing habits. MCn general manager for sales and marketing Damian Keogh says Britain and New Zealand currently measure daily time-shifted viewing using a smart set-top box called the Sky View Panel. "The software has the ability to show what people are doing in interactive, time-shifted and video-on-demand viewing," he says.

With 200,000 homes now using Foxtel's personal digital recorder IQ and growing digital consumption, Mr Keogh says the measurement industry could be seriously out of date within two years unless it invests in technology to match its increasingly tech-savvy audiences.

He says without those accurate measures of eyeballs and engagement, TV advertising is at stake. "On television in Australia, you're talking about a $3.5 billion advertising pie. The industry needs to make sure they're tracking this change in viewing habits."

What is gaining momentum is online measurement, but media buyers such as Steve Allen argue that the web also needs to have a standard measurement.

Unlike other media sectors, the internet industry worldwide has no agreed research methodology that gives advertisers and the public a standardised way to make judgements about ratings, according to MCn's Mr Keogh.

Radio National's Joe Gelonesi agrees that standardisation is the only way to fairly compare digital audiences. "Until we all subscribe to that, then it's just a schismatic world of everyone putting out figures, and apples and oranges will be in the same basket," he says.

Regardless of how things are measured, the consensus from media players is that the landscape has irrevocably changed. Media has fragmented so much now as audiences are faced with a bevy of mobile media at their fingertips and infinite content on the internet that big blockbuster audiences for any show are now a thing of the past.

And dwindling numbers certainly have the old guard sweating - none of the record labels contacted for this story was prepared to comment. Even the research groups appeared nervous to discuss audiences falling under the radar.

But you can't ignore the web when it starts taking budget away from the traditional content kings. Last year, online advertising topped $1 billion.

Researcher Mr Appel believes if old-school media continue to ignore Gen Y's hi-tech habits, they risk becoming irrelevant. Those who don't future-proof could well become white noise for a generation now moving to the beat of its own drum.

Gen Y tech trends

? 81.5 per cent own an MP3 player (a 9.7 per cent rise over last year)

? 89.3 per cent own a computer (Mac sales have risen by 7.9 per cent over last year)

? 98.6 per cent own a mobile phone

? 98.5 per cent use the internet regularly (up to six hours a day)

? 32.4 per cent downloaded music illegally over a four-week period

SOURCE: Lifelounge Urban Market Research 2007 for 16-30 year olds

Interesting

This story tells of the TRUE plight of the RIAA labels. (And of OUR salvation!)

We don't need traditional top-down programming. We don't even want "standardization".

Who CARES about the top-40 charts. We don't need charts.

The old guard is dying. (Thank God!)

...but we must remain vigilant and stop them from ruining our Internet. (They attack us from every angle in an attempt to prop up their old dying business model!)

Regarding the misguided notion of filtering the internet — Typical comments on blogs I visited had these kinds of things to say:

No technology can tell what "content" is. Asking a branch of the government to regulate it is a great idea, though. [sarcasm] See how well they've regulated the giving away of radio to Clearchannel? Cable has been a nice victory, and the internet radio fiasco is great, too.


The whole idea is total bullshit. First off, it's parents' jobs to watch what their kids do; second if a program "can't filter everything", what makes these senators think they can filter the entire internet?

If anything, they should spend a little money encouraging an open source program to filter out that garbage and provide free downloads to concerned parents. (And, for heaven's sake, NOT enable Microleech to get their greedy grasp in it with an add-on in their intrusive Vista.)


You know, I just teach my 5-year-old responsible behavior. The world is a dangerous place, but she's smart, and is amazing in her ability to make intelligent decisions... because I take the time to teach her. Perhaps dumbasses think the idea of letting Microsoft re-engineer the internet with proprietary formats will make her and the rest of the world "safe?" That's laughable. *Parents* teach their kids the skills they need to survive the classroom, the schoolyard, and yes, the internet.


If only there was someone honest enough and brave enough to stand up to violations against our civil liberties! If only we could be granted a viable candidate for President who would never regulate the internet, who would never waste our taxpayer dollars on responsibilities that belong to parents, and who would at the same time never violate our Constitutional rights in the name of "security".
If only Ron Paul had a chance to win. . .

I still think Alixe Cooper said it best: "You are the only censor. If you don't like what I say, you can just switch me off."

On a related note: http://www.dmusic.com/forum/music/21539

"US band Hawthorne Heights recently sold 500,000 copies of its debut album through its MySpace profile without the help of radio airplay or a major label."

500,000 copies without a major label


*dances like a pirate cuz he wuz drinkin' rum last night*

so far this week Ive been kicked outta 30 or so chatrooms fer "spamming" Dmusic, usually Im much too polite and hopefully Ive sent a few indies here. Sooner or later the convo in chats turn to music, free mp3s, anti-riaa stuff...
so yeah, get out their and start promoting Indie music sites!
can someone mention to the admins at chat connected to Gnutella's p2ps that Dmusic isn't a spam url?