Half a month talk丨 The number of programs in a year and a half has soared by 260%: podcasts have blown up, and the auditory "blue ocean" is in sight

In a year and a half, the number of programs soared by 260%: the podcasts blew up, and the auditory "blue ocean" was in sight

Half Moon Talk Reporter Wang Chenyang Lin Guangyao

From text-based Weibo, to image-based circle of friends, to douyin based on short videos... With the rapid development of mobile Internet, media channels have not been absent from the medium of sound, podcasts, but appear to be very light. Under the epidemic, the situation has changed, podcasts have entered the fast lane of development, in a year and a half, the number of podcast programs in the mainland has increased by more than 260%, the number of users has exceeded 86 million, and the same trend is happening around the world. Where did the podcasts come from, and where will they spread?

A girl recording an audio program

Are podcasts "Internet Radio"?

Podcasts first emerged in the North American market, and the term is derived from the English "Podcast", which is an Internet audio content product. With the maturity of hardware such as Bluetooth audio and wireless headphones, it is more convenient for people to receive sound messages, and the scenes for listening are more diverse, which has contributed to the rapid development of podcasts. You can download at will and listen to it at any time, and podcasts have quickly become the voice "companion" for many people when commuting, fitness, and doing housework.

"Podcasts are different from traditional broadcasts." Cheng Yanliang, founder of JustPod, a company that focuses on podcast content production, said that most of the broadcast programs are live streams, which is not convenient for secondary distribution of content, and there is no attribute of content consumption, and podcasts have these potentials, which are more in line with the needs of the mobile Internet era. Moreover, the mainstream audience of podcasts, the vast majority of them do not have the habit of listening to radio, and the audiences at home and abroad are mostly young people.

The threshold for podcast recording is not high, and a few people can produce programs through recording software or tools to chat, but in the faster-growing overseas podcast market, almost all the programs at the top of the list are produced by professional companies. Guest talks, anchor monologues, and even audio feature films, etc., podcast content has a lot of imagination. There are also more and more large companies that choose to produce branded podcasts, such as McDonald's, which has appeared on podcasts in response to the disruption of the Sichuan hot sauce supply chain in the United States.

"Since 2021, many traditional media and self-media have also begun to do podcasts, and podcasts are becoming the standard for market-oriented media." Shu Yulong, CEO of Podcast Platform Small Universe, said, "The production level of early podcasts was relatively rough, but there are still so many fans. The core of podcasts is still content, and with the popularity of podcasts, program production will become more and more sophisticated. ”

Who are the nearly 100 million users of the podcast

Industry insiders said that before the outbreak, many people on the concept of podcasts are not clear, the epidemic has reduced public exchanges, so that online content has gained more room for development, in the field of sound, the original music, audiobooks, etc. can not meet everyone's needs, podcasts ushered in an outbreak period. Yin Qiming, vice president of Himalaya, believes that the epidemic is an accelerator that gives birth to podcasts, but in the final analysis, the upgrading of spiritual consumption is the driving force for the growth of podcasts.

According to The Global Podcast Search Engine, According to ListingNotes, the number of mainland podcasts just exceeded 10,000 in April 2020 and soared to 36,000 by September 2021. There are about 86 million domestic podcast listeners, and relevant research institutions predict that the number of users will grow rapidly in the next two years, and the scale of users will grow to about 200 million.

Half Moon Talk reporter learned from multiple platforms that podcasts are developing rapidly. The small universe has been online for only one and a half years, and the number of users has exceeded 2 million; Himalaya has 7 million new podcast users from January to October 2021 alone; NetEase Cloud Music said that more than 10 million users listen to podcasts on its platform every month... And the stickiness of podcast users is very strong, although it is not a strong traffic entrance, but the internal ecology is stable, and some platform active users have an average daily listening time of more than 80 minutes, which is equivalent to that of short video platforms.

Yang Jinxi, a white-collar worker from Beijing who listens to 3 hours of podcasts every day, laughs and calls him a "heavy user" of podcasts, in addition to stories and talk shows, he will also pay attention to knowledge content on podcasts, such as legal knowledge, how to buy insurance products, etc.

The user profiles of podcasts are more uniform, generally aged 20 to 40, mainly living in first- and second-tier cities. Dong Chenyu, a lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communication of Chinese Min University, analyzed that the current education level and income level of the podcast audience are relatively high, which complements the characteristics of diversified podcast content, exploratory nature, and strong views. "Podcasts are a very interesting channel to learn about youth culture and young people's attention, and the current ecology is relatively healthy."

What will new media channels breed?

The Internet's scramble for user attention is becoming increasingly intense. Whether watching a show, playing a game, or making a video conference call on a streaming platform, the visual attention of Internet users has been greatly occupied, and podcasts offer a new aural track.

Party history study, content with goods, knowledge payment... The content of podcasts has kept pace with the times, and podcast production technologies such as AI document recognition and cloud editing are also at the forefront of the times. Yang Yi, co-founder of JustPod, believes that English podcast programs have exceeded 1 million files, Chinese podcast content is still barren and limited production capacity, but everyone is optimistic about its prospects. However, some large Internet platforms and investors are still waiting on the sidelines of the industry, because podcasts do not yet have a clear strong profit model.

At the same time, there is a shortage of professionals in the field of podcasting. Many traditional media people have transformed into podcasts, and they have advantages in content; but in the field of program production and project management, there are very limited talents with experience and ability. The person in charge of NetEase Cloud Music Podcast said that now that users on the platform produce more content than professional institutions produce content, the platform is ready to tap more people to help and support their growth.

Another uncertainty affecting the development of podcasts is the content review mechanism, and the industry still lacks unified and clear regulatory standards. Luo Zheng, a legal person of Small Universe Enterprise, said that in the absence of regulatory standards for audio content, the platform mostly uses the means of textualization of audio content to review, and then refers to the regulatory scale of text content. However, industry insiders said that there will be a problem of information loss in audio textualization, and more perfect review methods are still needed.

Some studies predict that the number of mainland podcast users could grow by more than 50 percent a year in the coming years. Many people hope to jump into the "blue ocean" of podcasts and chase the waves at the head of the tide; and people in them expect the sound of podcasts to roll up a series of stable and beautiful ripples.

(Published in Half Moon Talk, No. 5, 2022)