Sound narrative is naturally more imaginative and emotional, and the "sense of companionship" brought by sound cannot be replaced by other perceptions.
Since the birth of the first batch of domestic online audio applications such as Himalaya and Dragonfly FM, new entertainment methods such as audiobooks, cross talk, and radio dramas have become increasingly popular, and the "blue ocean" of listening is a thriving scene.
Podcasts are becoming popular, "like listening to the people at the next table chatting"
Relevant data shows that in 2021, the number of active users in China's voice economy market will reach 800 million, and the Internet content around "hearing" will become increasingly rich and mature.
In the past two years, podcasts, which have always been relatively light on "Sound Wave", have become increasingly popular. This digital media, which was born in 2004, had been tepid until 2014, when a non-fiction program became popular and podcasts began to grow explosively.
According to statistics, the total number of podcasts in the world in 2020 has grown from more than 3,000 at the beginning of its birth to millions.
The Chinese podcast can be counted from the 2005 program "Antiwave", and it has been developed for 17 years now.
2020 is called the Year of Chinese Podcasting by people inside and outside the industry. In two years, podcasts have slowly emerged from the niche circle, and more and more young people have begun to pay attention to podcasts.
At present, the podcasting applications on the market include Microverse, Pirate Radio, Soundon, IOS native podcasts, etc. Kuaishou has also developed the podcasting application "Kayak", and mature audio and music applications such as Dragonfly FM, Himalaya, and Netease Cloud have podcasts. Entrance.
In the past two years, the content supply of the podcast market has become more abundant. The global podcast search engine ListenNotes data shows that in April 2020, the number of podcasts in mainland my country exceeded 10,000 files, which lasted 14 months. In June 2021, it exceeded 20,000 files, and by 2021 On December 31, 2018, the number of mainland podcasts crawled by the website had grown to 23,157 files, an increase of 6,709 files from a year ago.
The types and number of podcasts have ushered in explosive growth, and more and more people are paying attention to podcasts.
According to relevant statistics, there are about 86 million domestic podcast listeners. Research institutions predict that the number of users will grow rapidly in the next two years, and the number of users will grow to about 200 million.
Among them, the podcasting app "Xiao 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 every month on its platform More than 10 million users listen to podcasts.
It is worth noting that the entry of comedy podcasts has led to the rapid growth of Chinese podcasts.
Taking the most sticky podcasting app “Xiao Universe” as an example, chatting and comedy podcasts are the most popular content on the platform.
"Comedian Chat" is a representative work of this type of podcast. The show was initiated by the comedy label "Shan Liren". The show brings together veteran talk show actors such as Zhou Qimo and Shi Boss. Each show is hosted by several hosts. Talk offline with your audience about the trivial things you encounter in life.
During the recording of each episode of the program, the audience at the scene are recruited in advance according to the theme submissions. The selected audience basically participates in the recording with their opinions, stories or memes. The jokes collided by the guests and the audience are sometimes more than the line. The talk show on Variety is pretty good.
The show currently has more than 210,000 subscriptions on Xiao Universe and more than 54.53 million views on Himalaya.
Also from the Dan Liren comedy label, "Boring Zhai" is co-hosted by talk show actors Liu Yang and Liu Beast. The show is no longer a small talk, but a dialogue with people from all walks of life. At present, nearly 300 episodes of the show are in the Himalayas. Played more than 82.21 million.
Talk show actor Mao Dong's personal podcast "Basically Harmless" is also one of the most popular shows. The podcast was selected as Apple's annual selection of podcasts. Winter, use podcasts as an important tool for self-worth expression.
In addition, Xiaoguo Culture also has podcasts "Interview in the Workshop" and "Comedy Life Talk", the stand-alone comedy also "A Word Disagreement" and "A Casual Talk", and the state-owned podcast "Hi Tan Record" in the comedy box.
Data shows that the Himalaya platform has more than 35,000 comedy albums, and its audience is mainly young users aged 18 to 30.
Liu Fei, the podcaster of "Three Five Rings", believes that the highest evaluation of a podcast is "like listening to the people at the next table chatting", which also reflects the reason why the audience loves podcasts - the silent companionship and presence of moisturizing things.
Listeners are keen to regard podcasts as BGM of their fragmented time. Whether it is commuting, doing housework or before going to bed, the experience of podcasting is light and free, and it does not require much concentration to think.
In addition to chatting podcasts, cultural podcasts are the most common type of Chinese podcasts. This type of podcast has a very high verticality, which makes listeners have an unparalleled high stickiness. Representative works include "Liang Wendao · Eight Points", which is chasing hot topics, and "Random Fluctuation", which focuses on women and literature, these podcasts mainly rely on the hosts and guests themselves. opinion output.
"Random Fluctuation" has only 60,000 subscriptions on "Small Universe" at the beginning of 2021. This year's podcast has more than 280,000 subscriptions. The podcast launched an episode of "Understanding a Tree" around last year's Arbor Day. " program, the guests started talking about nature, talked about history, literature and the civilization of human society, and finally returned to their own life stories; there is also a program "who is preventing women from offending and writing", from talk shows The controversy caused by actor Yang Li discussed the boundaries of women's public expression and women's creation.
These pan-cultural podcasts naturally set certain thresholds and barriers, so some people think that podcasts are like "knowledge payment" in a sense.
Seeking Realization Between "Keeping Yourself" and "Commercialization"
There are many ways to monetize video, such as patch, insert, and content customization, but these are not suitable for audio. At present, the commercial realization in the audio field is relatively simple, and most of them rely on simple "oral broadcasting".
For most creators of audio content, the distance of "sound realization" is still far away, because there is a clear understanding in the circle - "If content creators receive advertisements through the content itself, in the long run, the impact of the content on the content itself will be greatly reduced. The damage is huge.” So content value is their No. 1 driver.
The podcaster Fan Yiru currently has six podcasts, and "New Well-End Conference" is his representative work. He once said bluntly in the show: "Podcasting is not a career, not even a sideline. At first, podcasting was completely an experience. kind of 'recreation'."
On the more mature audio track, content value and commercialization are still a problem.
Dragonfly FM's head program "Da Tou Kanren" was launched in May 2018. "Da Tou" Yu Likun tells the life experience of financial figures and entrepreneurs with a unique perspective and warm style, and reviews their ups and downs. , has been widely welcomed by listeners, and is one of the most popular anchors of Dragonfly FM.
As of press time, the number of clicks of this column on Dragonfly has exceeded 980 million, which is only one step away from the 1 billion mark. However, the latest issue of the column is fixed on February 25.
"I'm not as eager and excited about traffic and clicks now, and my body is more tired, so I decided to stop broadcasting for a while and make adjustments." Yu Likun is currently the top three anchors of the entire Dragonfly network, and has been living in talk shows for a long time. The top position on the charts, starting from an amateur, has not been easy all the way. He told reporters that he was the most excited when the number of broadcasts reached the first "100,000+". excited.
"Da Tou Kanren" is a story-telling column. Each program is about 50 minutes long. Each recording requires at least 10,000 words of text content. Five or six hours of preparation time. For Li Kun, it is now accumulated. The more than 450 episodes of the program are the crystallization of inspiration and hard work. "The text of the draft alone has 7 million words, and the collated data far exceeds this number." Creative exhaustion is a problem that every content creator will encounter. Yu Li Kun described the "inspiration like a spring" when he first started the column, "At the beginning, I had a good desire to express, and my creativity was very abundant. At that time, the inspiration was like a spiritual bonanza, and I felt inexhaustible. But as time goes by , the passion gradually recedes, the spread of the program is getting wider and wider, and the inner self-censorship is getting higher and higher." Yu Likun said that although there are new listeners in each issue, he will not talk about the topics he has talked about. For the second time, "objectively, in fact, the content of creation is slowly becoming narrower."
It is a tiring process to constantly jump out of the field you are familiar with and develop new content.
Yu Likun later added new columns such as "Datou Reading Club" and "Datou Poetry Club" on the basis of "Datou Kanren". When he was the busiest, he would update 6 episodes of the program every week, all of which were new content. When I think about it, maybe university teachers don’t have such a hard time preparing lessons. For example, ancient literature teachers talk about the Wei and Jin Dynasties, and they may talk about the same content every year. But we have to tear it apart with the audience’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge. What is it to please the audience? , or do you want to please yourself? This is also a question to be tangled." After more than a month of suspension, Yu Likun said sincerely: "The show has reached the present, maybe the fans' expectations have not been considered too much for us, I myself If you don’t have a good work, you’d rather not make it or make it shoddy, or make content to cater to traffic.”
Qilu Evening News reporter Li Rui