Inside Music MediaJerry Del Colliano

As a generation they would never pay for what’s tantamount to commercial radio for a fee. 

But they will absolutely find $9 a month to give to Netflix even with student loans, part-time jobs and the miserable economy they graduated into.

And Millennials don’t care that terrestrial radio is free – to them, it is worth exactly what they are paying for it – nothing.

Yet they continue to love Pandora, which is a free music service.

And they put up with Pandora’s commercials probably because they are short, relatively infrequent compared to radio and have an element to them that Millennials rather like – no production, all talk.

Millennials drive the music market yet they are buying fewer CDs and even downloads than ever.  Only a few million of them will pay to make Spotify mobile even though they generally like Spotify.

They’ll never pay for cable because they hate bundling even more than their compliant parents and satellite TV is another version of pay cable.

So you have to laugh when Sirius XM raises its monthly subscription rate by 50 cents as it did last week when it is a well-known fact that they’ll drop their pants and almost let you name your price if you simply threaten to cancel. 

What I’m saying is Millennials don’t want services like these at any price and if you study why, you learn a lot of useful things.

Your kids know more about where the media business is heading than you do.

The other day when I wrote that the well-known fact that Millennials don’t like to drive and could care less about the connected dashboard, one high profile radio exec wrote to me to say:

“Jerry, sometimes you make comments that are just comical.  I love the one below where millenials now want public transportation.  It's not really an option in most markets, but many of them are still sleeping on mom and dads couch so they have no place to go...why need a car?  I have two kids are ARE millenials, and suggesting they give up that car would be like giving up an appendage”.

Comical?

Guess who will have the last laugh – the person who studies the data and cooperates with the inevitable.

Talk about denial.

Here’s what we know about the changing preferences of a generation that numbers 80 million people coming of age:

1. The number one must-have media service for any Millennial is a portal to video entertainment such as Netflix, Hulu, Hulu Plus and to a lesser but still significant extent HBO Go and other on-demand services.  This generation can’t live without video.  For those who cannot afford any of this, there’s always the DVR.
2. Podcasting is just broadcasting delivered over the Internet.  It is so never going to be a meaningful and profitable endeavor.  It’s too long.  Sounds too much like talk radio.  Millennials hate talk radio and have short attention spans.  Nice try, but podcasting is not going to be a factor with Millennials.

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