When will the "ear economy" "break the circle" What are the big energies of the small universe?

Figure: Figure worm

Source: 21tech

Author: Tao Li Intern Dong Jingyi

Editor: Li Qingyu

Evening rush hour, Shanghai subway, crowded crowds.

Ah Orange, who had just left work, squeezed onto the subway with the flow of people, found a corner in the carriage, turned on the headphone noise reduction mode, and casually clicked on a subscribed podcast. The subway starts, the headphones only have soft music and the familiar voice of the anchor, she stares at the darkness outside the subway car window, but the scene that emerges in front of her is like being in a café, and the anchor is sitting in front of her, talking about the life that is close or far away from her.

As a not-so-senior podcast user, such a commuting habit has been with Ah Orange for more than a year. In the past year or so, podcasts are gradually infiltrating her daily life and life circles: more and more people talk about podcasts around her, some friends have even become anchors themselves, and the sharing of podcast content in the circle of friends has also grown.

Overall, the pandemic is a catalyst, with low-threshold, low-cost production and audience demand for companionship spurting. According to the podcast search engine Next Notes, as of May 2020, the number of Chinese podcasts has exceeded 10,000, compared with only 2,000 in 2019.

However, podcasts still seem to be difficult to get rid of the label of "niche culture", and the discussion of whether it can be done, whether it is good or not, and whether it can break the circle has never stopped inside and outside the circle.

Have fun talking, don't talk about making money

Since the beginning of this year, the layout of the podcast track on major platforms has been very lively. Immediately launched the podcast App small universe, Himalaya launched an independent podcast channel, Litchi launched the Litchi Podcast App, music platforms NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music joined the podcast section, and Kuaishou, which focuses on short videos, also launched a podcast product "Kayak" in November last year.

Liu Fei, the anchor of the podcast "Three Five Rings", once said in a program that most of the current podcasts are driven by expression, rather than audience needs.

"Desire to express" is a topic that cannot be avoided when talking about podcasts, and the personalized expression and output of opinions are the underlying logic of making a Chinese podcast. Media people took the lead in entering the game, and three or two people carried out rich discussions and thinking around a certain theme, and the form was mainly interview exchanges. For creators, making a podcast is not an end in itself, just a result presentation, and the most important thing is the content itself.

Liu Fei's "Three-Five Rings" is an interview program that invites guests, each episode invites peers from all walks of life to chat about ideas about life, and today it has been updated for more than fifty issues, with more than 50,000 subscriptions in the small universe. His creative habits began in college, and he has done text creation on platforms such as Zhihu and public accounts.

In his opinion, the cost of writing, especially writing long essays, is still too high. "At first, I didn't actively choose podcasts, but I just felt that the content of chatting with many friends around me was valuable and worth sharing." Doing podcasts is like putting a recording next to the process of chatting, the process is relaxed, and there is no fine pressure to pay for knowledge, which is a good channel for content expression. ”

When the podcast "Culture Limited", which has just celebrated its second anniversary, was first launched, the ideas of the anchors were also very simple. "Isn't it just chatting", the three friends hit it off, and thus began the content production of their podcast.

"I mainly want to let myself read more books, watch more movies, and precipitate some thoughts to express," anchor Yang Dayi told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, "In addition, the three of us can get together every week and chat very happily." Podcasts are still very niche, if you are against traffic or against fame, you might as well do short videos or something. ”

In April this year, "Culture Limited" launched the "423 Reading Day" campaign, inviting 76 podcast anchors to share books on the stage, which can be regarded as one of the major events in the 2021 podcast circle, after which it ushered in a wave of subscription growth, but the increase was not significant, just the flow of fans in the circle.

"Blockbusters" and "breaking circles" rarely occur in the podcast circle. A real problem is that it is difficult to monetize without enough traffic, Liu Fei revealed that the income of podcasts is only about one-tenth of the income of full-time work.

What is the value of "niche"?

It is understood that most of the anchors are part-time podcasters, and there are only a few podcasts that can really make money as a regular job, such as lively and justpod, which have more than one podcast program, and its commercialization system is relatively complete. However, the revenue of nearly 10 million in the year of the leader does not represent the entire podcast ecology, and for ordinary anchors, even if it has reached tens of thousands of subscriptions, it is still impossible to do podcasts as a full-time choice.

A group of anchors did not stop updating, enthusiasm and interest drove them to continue to create works, but also attracted to their loyal audience, the beginning of the mention of Ah Orange is one of them. The two-hour commute back and forth during the workday was like "forced idleness" for her, she didn't want her brain to stagnate, she didn't want to receive content that was too densely informational, and she "wanted to find something interesting but not so strenuous to do."

The appearance of podcasts just met her needs. Interesting topics, a relaxed atmosphere, the same intake of information and knowledge, but not as much as listening to paid knowledge content requires full attention. "It's like listening to a friend chat."

And that's the unique charm of this medium. McLuhan wrote in Understanding the Medium– On the Extension of Man, "Radio has an invisible shell, as is the case with any other medium. It appears before us in the intimate, intimate form of direct human dealings with each other. Then it is actually a magical subconscious resonance box that can pull the strings of a long forgotten piano, which is a more important fact. ”

Sincerity and trust are the charm of podcast products, and listeners have established a deep emotional connection with the anchor in their hearts, and usually have a higher stickiness. Anchor Yang Dayi told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that the background data shows that some listeners will repeat the content several times, and the threshold for listeners to subscribe may be very high, but the threshold for canceling subscriptions is also very high. "Podcasts have the common denominator of audio product advantages, the companionship and comfort brought by music, the leisure and pleasure brought by audio in audio novels, and they are also as dry as knowledge paid content."

It is precisely because there are too many "dry goods" that podcasts are still a niche choice in the early stage of development. Culture and talk are the mainstays, and their content depth cannot be defined as simple "leisure and entertainment", which raises the listening threshold and naturally filters out a large number of potential podcast listeners. According to PodFest China's survey data, the main force of Chinese podcast listeners comes from first-tier and new first-tier cities, of which more than 85% have a bachelor's degree or above, and nearly 90% are young people under the age of 35.

How to continue to produce quality content is a difficult problem for bloggers. Therefore, most of the first to enter the game are practitioners from the cultural field and the media industry, such as Yang Yi of "Suddenly Left and Sudden Right" who worked as an editor of CBN for eight years, Li Zhiming of "Ritan Park" was the founding reporter of "Beijing News", and Xu Tao of "Sound East Strikes West" also had a journalistic career of more than ten years, which led to a certain degree of convergence in the form of podcasts.

At present, categories such as talk shows and story sharing are emerging, although they are not as mainstream as the talking podcasts, but they still play a non-negligible role in the overall expansion of the podcast ecosystem. It is understood that the broadcast volume of the two programs of "Harmonic Star Chat Meeting" and "Boring Zhai" on the Himalayas has exceeded 10 million.

If the mainstream of previous podcasts was aimed at a subset of "Kochi" elements, they undoubtedly extended their audience to the entire mass group.

The ceiling is far from being reached

At present, the number of English podcasts has exceeded 1.6 million, while the country is still in the single digits. In the face of the mature podcast system in Europe and the United States, the development of Chinese podcasts has only just budded.

According to buzzsprout, 78 percent of Americans are familiar with podcasts, and more than a third of those over the age of twelve regularly listen to podcasts, with nearly 104 million people. At the same time, its commercialization is also going well, and the advertising business agency IAB reports that the advertising revenue of US podcasts has reached $842 million in 2020, an increase of 19% year-on-year, and is expected to exceed $1 billion this year.

In May last year, music streaming platform Spotify bought the podcast show "Joe Rogan Experience" by podcast celebrity Joe Rogan for $100 million, which also caused quite a stir in the domestic podcast circle. The thriving scene of podcasts on the other side of the ocean also proves that the development prospects of podcasts are promising, and the ceiling of Chinese podcasts is far from being reached.

Compared with the complete system of the United States basically moving from broadcast translation to podcasting, China's podcast practitioners are still exploring a suitable development path through the Internet. The emergence of the podcast app small universe has promoted the possibility of podcasts breaking the circle to a certain extent.

The small universe was officially launched in March last year, and unlike the multi-domain mix of other audio platforms, the small universe only focuses on the vertical segment of podcasts. Prior to this, most of the listeners of podcasts used Apple Podcast or European and American podcast applications that came with Apple's mobile phones, but their understanding of "this is podcast" was often not very clear.

Listeners are scattered across platforms, the concept of "podcasts" is not widely accepted, and communities around podcasts have never been built. The emergence of the small universe undoubtedly brings together the podcast anchors and listeners of the whole network, fills the gap between podcast producers and consumers, and expands the cognition of "podcasts" to a wider range of people. In an interview with 21st Century Business Herald, Kyth, CEO of Small Universe, said that "Small Universe may be an important factor for podcasts to regain more attention after 2020."

Facts have also proved the untapped nature of this field. At present, the small universe has subscribed to more than 1,000 programs with more than 1,000 people, and more than 25,000 paid users. According to Kyth, the degree of commercialization of podcast anchors this year has been much better than last year, and the current platform does not take a fee for paid programs to help anchors accelerate commercialization. "I hope to drive the entire podcast out of the circle with the development of the small universe."

If the emergence of the small universe in 2020 is the first year of China's podcast, then for the young life that has been online for less than two years, The Chinese podcast is obviously still in the early stage of development, and it needs to slowly expand its volume and wait for the outlet that belongs to it.

Kyth said bluntly that commercialization is something that will always be thought about, but it is not the highest priority at this stage. "We are still thinking about how to let more people listen to podcasts and more people do podcasts."

From the expansion of UGC to the gradual transition to PGC, the podcast market that has been "growing wildly" is also in the process of continuous optimization. Compared with the increasingly saturated video track, the development prospects of the audio field are still relatively optimistic, Ai Media Consulting data shows that it is expected that in 2022, the scale of online audio users will reach 690 million people, and podcasts, as a new force of the "ear economy", will also be steadily developing to explore its suitable business model.

Editor: Lu Taoran