How do radio stations know that you’re listening to them? Is there a signal sent back somehow?

Question

How do radio stations know that you’re listening to them? Is there a signal sent back somehow?

In: 2349

Answer 1

Ratings agencies. For TV (e.g. the Neilsen ratings) they have little boxes that can tell what you’re watching.

For radio its 100% self reporting. They phone you up and ask if you want to be in your areas radio survey. Maybe pay you $2 or $5 or something trivial. They mail you a log or journal and you just write down what radio station you’re listening to throughout the course of a week or a month or whatever.

Then they compile everyone’s answers and crunch some stats and they can extrapolate to the entire population of your area how many people are listening to what.

I used to do it until I got Spotify. Didn’t seem fair to take their $ to return an empty booklet.