Podcast is on fire again: Audio entrepreneurship return to the mainstream

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Sina Science and Technology Nan

The podcast is on fire again.

Radio DJ Xiao Yan decided to leave the broadcasting station, which served 2 years, to become a free podcast. "The podcast is on fire again, you don't know." "She told Sina Technology excitedly that a mobile radio station would sign up with her to sign her own homemade program for an exclusive show at a considerable price."

With this income, Xiao Yan can not be committed to the radio station as a "no work contract", income is not high "day night Out", began to devote himself to the original program.

With the popularization of mobile internet and the increasing commuting time of people, the demand of entertainment in mobile is urgent to be satisfied. In the past two years, various types of mobile radio start-ups have grown rapidly, and broadcasters such as Xiao Yan have a new stage to start leaving traditional media and joining the Internet tide.

Podcast 10 Reincarnation

The podcast (Podcast) is a familiar "old" word for Chinese internet people. As early as 2004, the Chinese Internet podcast once ushered in a short spring. That year, the podcast World, Chinese podcast nets, pineapple nets, Tudou, such as the emergence of a series of blog sites, blew up the entrepreneurial tide. Sina, Sohu and other large websites have followed up, launched their own podcast channel.

A large number of talented young people with simple equipment can produce audio programs, spread through the Internet, quickly created a group of network celebrities. Only one of the pineapple nets, at the peak of 2005, has more than 19,000 podcast channels, a total of more than 50,000 programs.

At the time, venture capital was a novelty. Wang Micro-created Tudou became the first to get venture capital of the Chinese podcast site, IDG's 800,000 U.S. dollars, so that the whole industry increased confidence. Some media have even predicted that after Tudou, China will be able to have more than 10 podcast companies are favored by capital.

However, thanks to the rise of the video web site, the podcast quickly hit a serious blow. The video is richer and more attractive, and users start switching from audio to video, and many websites, including Tudou, have to transform the video, and a generation of podcasts begins to fade.

"Everyone thinks the radio has collapsed, and the radio station is actually living well," he said. "Xiao Yan told Sina Science and technology, because of the rapid popularization of automobiles, the current radio station income is increasing, the number of listeners is also showing an upward trend."

With the popularity of cars and the growing commuting time, the demand for entertainment in the mobile environment is becoming more and more intense, audio is almost the only way to meet this demand, audio entrepreneurs began to return to the mainstream.

Low threshold attracts audio enthusiasts

"Everyone can record high-quality audio programs, but not everyone makes good videos," he said. ”

See the video site stumbled, from countless people to the ebb, to the difficult to maintain, and now still difficult to profit, Litchi FM founder Rai secretly lucky, from the beginning of the choice of audio-this is not so burning money road.

Prior to the creation of the Litchi FM, Rai's entrepreneurial project was 183 communities, a community dedicated to migrant workers. With the popularity of micro-letters, his community faded.

"Micro-credit development, 183 community No future, I decided to transition to the micro-letter." "Since Rai had previously worked on the radio and was more interested in radio stations, he created a micro-credit public account," Litchi FM, "which allows users to listen to audio programs.

"Listen to the radio with the micro-letter, this is the propaganda slogan." Rai recalls that at that time most of the micro-letter account is still in a very primitive state, Litchi FM made some innovation, so that users can easily listen to network radio, quickly gathered a group of radio anchors and enthusiasts to join.

"The public number is on the line in March 2013 and has 1 million fans by May, which has greatly increased confidence in the team." "he said. But a few months later, the problem came. The new version of the micro-letter weakened the public account of the embodiment of the public number "folded" into level two page, which let the Litchi FM users rapid decline in growth.

Rai decided to turn Litchi FM from a micro-signal into a stand-alone app. October 2013, the Litchi FM independent app online. In order to reduce the production threshold of audio programs, Litchi FM in mobile app to build a complete set of program production function, on the phone can achieve the soundtrack, real-time mixing and other advanced effects.

"Now there are 10 of the top ten podcasts in the Litchi FM, and 8 are recorded by mobile phones," he said. The lowering of the threshold frees the user's creativity, as long as you have a point of view, content can produce an audio program, contrary to the video is not so, rely on one or two of people's small team can not produce high-quality video. "Rai said.

As long as you have a cell phone, and you don't even need a recording device, you can become a network anchor, light your point of view and tell your jokes. Such a low threshold allows a large number of enthusiasts to try their skill. Among the hosts of Litchi FM are students, traditional broadcasters, online literary writers, and even housewives.

Aggregation or originality?

Aggregate content or original content, this is every audio platform before starting a business need to think clearly about the problem. Dragonfly FM chose the former.

In China, the coverage of radio stations is strictly restricted to all regions, and in Beijing you will never be able to hear Shanghai broadcasts, and only a handful of central-level broadcasters can achieve nationwide coverage.

Through the Dragonfly FM, users can break the limits of the region, through the news, sports, music, acrobatics and other 13 different styles of classification, users can find the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other almost all major radio stations, through the mobile phone to listen directly.

This aggregation pattern is not a good approach, Yu Jianyo, an assistant to the FM CEO. "It's a model that's going through the US and it's been born with apps like TuneIn, but it's not going to work in China," he said. ”

"China's radio is different from the United States, the United States is a type of radio, anyone can set up a radio station, in order to seek characteristics, must focus on a specific area, easy to focus on the small audience." And China's radio is a monopolistic operation, the program is a typical plate, the relationship between the two programs is not small, and different between Taiwan, such as Shanghai Music Station and Beijing music platform content is not very different. "Yu Jianyo said.

In fact, the user is not listening to the radio, but content. "It's kind of like the beginning of a video web site, where they integrate all the live signals, you can see dozens of of them, but you're not looking at the stations, but the content on the TV," Yu Jianyo said. So now no one will go to the television station live broadcast, but directly to a program to recommend to the user.

Three models emerge from the surface

The founding team of the Koala FM are from the traditional broadcasting industry, and until now they are still contracted to operate a number of radio stations such as Sichuan Traffic radio. Based on the experience of traditional content, they want to extend the advantage to the mobile Internet, to do a special car-oriented intelligent audio software, which was born koalas.

Turning on test FM does not require the user to select a program like any other mobile radio software, but to start playing directly. The content is not from the traditional broadcasting station, but the Web podcast. Koalas FM will be arranged as a comprehensive radio, news radio, comedy radio, sports Radio and other dozens of different channels, according to the user's preferences to automatically arrange the recommended programs, the formation of personalized radio.

Like koalas, Litchi FM also rejects the traditional radio programs, all from the user's original. "Our network of radio users are very young, not traditional radio users, they have barely heard of traditional radio programs, is a purely network generation, traditional radio programs do not attract them." "The Litchi FM founder Rai said.

The Yu Jianyo of the Koala FM concludes that the entire network radio industry can be divided into three models: one is to Himalaya as the representative of the content platform, aggregated a large number of content, such as hundreds of forums, audio novels, Guo Crosstalk, etc., for users on demand. Second, the Dragonfly FM as representative, the aggregation of a large number of traditional radio stations, become "Radio supermarket."

The third is the personalized Internet radio station, which is based on the Koala FM or Litchi FM. Koala FM automatically matches the user's interest by constantly learning the user's behavior and labeling its contents.

"With the popularization of 4G and the reduction of telecom tariffs, the flow of audio programs has begun to be accepted by users." By contrast, if you use traffic to watch video I'm afraid users are still hard to afford, so audio entrepreneurship is entering the best time. "Yu Jianyo said.

Underestimated Field

Himalaya founder Jianjun does not agree that he is "content platform" positioning, he is more willing to describe himself as "sound social media."

"Content aggregation is on the one hand, Himalaya has the largest content library in the industry, on the other hand we are transforming into social media, encouraging users to interact on Himalaya." "Jianjun said.

Jianjun revealed that Himalaya currently has more than 55 million total activation, is the audio field of the first app, the average user listening time of nearly 70 minutes.

"We devote most of our energy to the construction of UGC (user-generated content), and each user is able to make their own programs that are of interest, gain influence, and gain benefits." ”

On the Himalaya platform, an ordinary female college students, from an early age to have a radio station dream, he recorded in the dormitory "the" "Show" program, settled Himalaya platform after a single period of play volume reached 600,000, soon introduced The Advertiser to the title.

In Jianjun's view, Mobile audio Web site's business model is very easy to build, not only can introduce advertising mode, in the program to add ads like Youku, but also to some of the quality of the content of the use of members to pay the way, the profit is not a problem.

"More importantly, the Mobile audio field is an undervalued area, relatively unpopular, so few internet giants enter, let us have a little more time to practice the internal strength." "Jianjun said.