760 million views.
Guess first, what platform data is this?
TikTok? quick worker? b station? Neither.
This 760 million is the number of views of a car vertical podcast on the Himalaya platform.
Seven years ago, Dou Chao, the anchor of this podcast, was still doing car sales in a 4S store, and in his spare time, he would listen to audio programs by Luo Zhenyu and others online.
He used to be a star salesman in Nanjing, and he had the experience of becoming a sales champion within 3 months of joining the company, and after 9 years of doing so, he began to clearly feel that the automobile sales industry was on the downward slope. "I want to reform, but some of the more conservative leaders in the 4S store only want to maintain stability."
The work concept was not recognized, and the development path was also divergent from the leader, at this time, Dou Chao happened to find a "everyone as an anchor" activity in the Himalayas, and with the mentality of trying it out, he recorded all his thoughts into audio and put it on the Internet.
At that time, the Himalayas podcast section did not have a "car" column, and his "100 Cars All Talk" was classified in the "Other" column. Soon, fans poured in from all over the country, and with high traffic and high interaction, "100 Cars All Say" quickly became the head show in the "other" category.
Yu Jianjun, the founder of the platform, also heard the news and called.
On the phone, Dou Chao heard Yu Jianjun call this program "podcast" and "podcast" and call what he did "self-media".
He listened to the clouds and fog, but still went to Shanghai to have a conversation with Yu Jianjun. During the conversation, the latter suggested that he quit his job and become an anchor on the platform.
At that time, Dou Chao's annual salary in sales work had reached hundreds of thousands, and what guarantee was there to be an anchor?
"Did I quit my job and you raised me?" He asked very directly.
The answer to this question was "(Contract) You can sign it exclusively if you want.")
Dou Chao became an anchor in the Himalayas for seven years. He said: "Actually, I am very grateful to him (Yu Jianjun), who made me an old cannon in the auto media circle that did not belong to me. ”
There are many more such stories in the Himalayas.
This platform has led a group of anchors to podcasts, and has also done a good job in the field of podcasting.
On Saturday, Himalaya vice president Yin Qiming unveiled a set of data at the podfest China podcast conference. Between January and October 2021, nearly 7 million users listened to podcasts for the first time in the Himalayas, and all of the historical audio content on the platform was up to 2.1 billion minutes long.
2.1 billion minutes allows a person to listen to it without repeating for more than 4,000 years.
In the past two years, the number of hosts on the platform has reached a blowout. As of the third quarter of this year, the number of podcasts hosted in the Himalayas has exceeded 23,300.
The self-media "minority" explained the concept of "hosting" in detail in the article: for a general platform such as Apple, the anchor needs to find a platform to host the audio file and submit it to Apple so that the audience can see the program.
This year's podcast industry has also seen another weather vane: the track is getting wider and wider, and the model is becoming more and more diverse.
For example, some professional media practitioners are starting to enter the podcast.
Today, the Beijing News has produced 29 podcast programs for distribution in the Himalayas, and the content is distributed in various categories such as finance, film and television, entertainment, and news, of which the most popular program has been played more than 65 million times.
A podcast program owned by the Beijing News
Click on the opening article hot list can be found that CCTV, Oriental Network, Yangcheng Evening News, Guangdong Times Media Group and other traditional media have produced podcast programs, open a news broadcast at will, the familiar broadcast voice and greeting words ring in the ears - "Good evening to the audience, today is Monday, November 2nd, the 28th of the ninth month of the lunar calendar ..."
Podcast producers are not limited to professionals, in the Himalayas, we can see doctor anchors, Japanese food store owner anchors, 17-year-old high school sophomore girl anchors, post-90s small couple anchors... Dou Chao defines the Himalaya as a platform where "anyone can express their opinions", and it can be seen that podcasts are moving from a niche to the public, from rarely heard to familiar, whether professional or non-professional practitioners, can have a place in podcasts.
At the same time, some other categories of podcast shows are growing steadily.
The podcasting community is often criticized for having a lot of content redundancy in the industry and flooding with pan-cultural programs. In contrast, in the Himalayas, podcasts are divided into seven broad categories: humanities and arts, film and television entertainment, lifestyle, technology and business, career growth, podcast newcomers and sports, and each category has a more prominent program attempt.
According to the podcast list cooperated by Himalaya and the new list, in the top 5 of the September podcast hit list, the content of the podcast program can be described as the north and south of the sky - talking about basketball, talking about hares, talking about aerospace, talking about immigration, dividing categories, and can distinguish between technology, sports, in-depth stories and other categories.
These programs have reached the tens of millions of orders of magnitude, including the technology program "It was so?!!" "Listened to 300 million, more than 10,000 comments, there are many long-term chase of fan messages: listened to 5 years, from primary school to high school; very good, from 8 years old to 80 years old are suitable for popular science programs; 17 years to find this show to chase to the present, super praise ...
Not only that, but many celebrities in the field of culture and entertainment have also entered the podcast.
One of Li Yinhe's podcasts, "Li Yinhe Says Love", the total number of listeners of the program has reached more than 10 million, and the program "Super Newsstand" has invited Wang Zheng, Sun Qian, Wang Ruolin and other stars to share their views, as of now, the podcast program has been broadcast 100 million times.
In order to continue to expand the boundaries of podcasting, Himalaya is also trying to launch various projects, such as the "Global Story Project" that solicits different life experiences in 100 cities around the world, the "Himalfa Group" of legal anchors, or the provision of incubation camps and cash subsidies for creators.
Dou Chao said that Himalayas once held a similar training: "At that time, I was very excited, I felt that this thing was what I needed the most, and I needed a systematic set of courses and platforms for regular training. ”
Domestic podcasts are developing rapidly. From the product itself, podcasts also have irreplaceable characteristics: companionship, strong companionship, people can listen when running, commuting, washing and cooking, it does not require hands to continue to operate, nor does it need to continue to use the eyes, which is the hot short video platform can not do.
"Podcast Year One", "Podcast Outlet", "Podcast Blue Ocean", "Ear Economy"... These words continue to appear in the population of the industry and have long dominated the headlines of the media.
Yin Qiming noted in his speech that when an industry is called the first year, we need to be vigilant. "Behind the first year, are all the practitioners in this industry really fully prepared, and are all the time for this industry ripe?"
He described the year of podcasting in one sentence: some people chased the wind into the game, some people lost and left.
The author "WuQuan No. 289" once mentioned the opinion of the podcast director of "Relish": the vast majority of creators can't last seven months. During the pandemic, many people do podcasts, but this year, many podcasts have stopped.
Do podcasts make money? OK.
But commercialization has always been an anxiety and pain point in the podcast industry.
Making a podcast is as simple as having a smartphone on hand and that phone has a recording function. The difficulties are continuous, regular updates, and monetization through programming.
Yin Qiming said: "The podcast itself is a marathon, and it may be the persistence in the end. ”
We can also see the dawn of podcast commercialization through the practice of anchors and users.
"100 Cars All Says" can be picked up in the peak season with four or five ads, the annual income of advertising alone is hundreds of thousands, in the past podcast marketing, Himalaya has also linked up with Lenovo, Tongrentang and other brands, customized corporate podcasts, health products with goods and other activities.
Taking Lenovo Enterprises' podcast "Big Country Computing Power" as an example, the program invited five industry experts, including Han Xiaopeng, China's first winter Olympics male champion, and Wu Zunyou, an epidemiology expert at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to discuss topics such as life and medical treatment, East Olympic meteorology, film and television special effects, and industrial manufacturing.
In the end, the total number of listeners of this show reached 13.77 million, covering Platforms such as WeChat, Weibo, and Douyin outside the station, reaching more than 20 million users.
This is advertisers' recognition of the value of Himalayan media, and even more so for the audio as a form. It is understood that Himalaya's marketing methods can be divided into IP marketing, podcast marketing, event marketing and other ways, in the first half of this year, it also reached cooperation with operators, automobiles, finance, games and other brands in many fields.
The core users of Himalaya podcasts are white-collar workers, accounting for 23.5% of the total number of users. This group of people represents the highest consumer goods bit of mainstream consumption today, and also represents the most competitive consumer group in the next 10 years.
Dou Chao used "die-hard fans" to describe them: "Himalaya is the best place to cultivate loyal users, I said once in the show that I want to go to Ningxia, and immediately more than n people sent private messages, saying 'I'm Ningxia', 'I'm Wu Zhong', 'I want to see you', 'I want to eat with you'..."
Fan loyalty means strong monetization ability.
Some time ago, he talked about buying an electric bicycle in the show, more than 2,000 yuan, the battery life is very long, the function is also very good, and then there are more than twenty people who follow him to buy the same electric car, and even the color of the car is the same as his.
As a leading player in the field of podcasting, Himalaya also shared the strategic plan of the future: multilateral win-win, and work with partners in the industry to make this cake bigger.
Promote commercial integrated marketing, promote more IP linkage, optimize podcast products... There are still many things that the platform side can do, but more importantly, the whole industry works together, not only to follow the trend, but to achieve long-term and sincere cultivation.
After the hustle and bustle, the world of podcasts will be better.