For many podcast listeners, following their favorite shows is a solitary experience.
A recent survey of 2,000 users by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications found they listened to podcasts most often at home, during commutes or while exercising. Over the past couple of years, however, a new trend, audio livestreaming, has taken off in China. The medium is basically a combination of podcasting and talk radio, with mobile apps enabling interactive features like live chats with other listeners, call-in requests and emoji reactions.
If it follows other formats that gained traction in China before becoming popular elsewhere, like short-form video apps (including TikTok) and video livestreams, it may give podcasts in other markets a new way to reach more listeners and monetize.
Castbox, a podcast app headquartered in San Francisco with an engineering office in Beijing, launched Livecasts in July. Available in its mobile and desktop apps, which have 20 million users around the world, the feature allows hosts to launch audio livestreams in private or public channels.
While communities of fans have grown around many popular podcasts, interacting with hosts and other listeners is still a fragmented experience that takes place through Facebook groups, Twitter hashtags, online forums like Reddit or, more occasionally, podcast players like Castbox that have comments sections. Sometimes podcasts are recorded live, either in front of an audience or while it streams online, but even then the user experience is still relatively passive, focused on listening instead of interacting.
Audio livestreams give hosts a more immediate way to engage with listeners. In China, all three of the most popular audio content apps — Ximalaya, Lychee and Dragonfly — include audio livestreams, covering topics ranging from politics and current events to relationships and parenting.
About almost half of the users of Castbox’s app, a podcast player that also has original programming, are from the United States, but the company’s engineering base in China means it is well-positioned to introduce Chinese internet trends to new markets.
Yicheng Ruan, Castbox product manager, tells Extra Crunch that audio livestreams are like much more interactive versions of talk radio shows. Castbox’s Livecast includes many of the same features that have become popular in China, including the ability to stream a live audio chat with multiple hosts, in-channel messaging rooms, call-in requests and virtual gifts paid for with in-app currency that can be exchanged for real money.
There are several core differences between how people consume podcasts and audio livestreams, Ruan adds. Many people listen to podcasts after work, during their commutes or on weekends. But audio livestream users tend to be most active at night, typically spending one to two hours per session listening and interacting with hosts and other users. Many audio livestream listeners are also younger, between 18 to 25 years old. They are the generation that grew up alongside China’s mobile internet and are therefore generally more willing to try and adopt new formats.
Ruan says they like audio livestreams because the topics discussed are “more diverse and they want to communicate with hosts,” adding that “with a podcast, it’s usually a more passive experience, but listeners also want to talk to hosts and chat with them, share their ideas or respond to what they say.”
For hosts, audio livestreams present a lower barrier to entry than video livestreams and more privacy because they don’t have to show their faces. Some only host audio livestreams, while others use them as a supplement to their regular pre-recorded podcasts.
The popularity of audio livestreams has helped drive the growth of China’s biggest audio content apps, which include podcasts, audio books and livestreams on one platform. Ximalaya is reportedly seeking to raise about $350 million in new funding at a $3.5 billion valuation and recently said it has 600 million users who spend an average of 170 minutes in the app each day. Its popularity allows it to offer exclusive content from celebrities and it is also the biggest investor in San Francisco-based Himalaya Media, a startup that recently raised $100 million for its podcasting app, which has a micro-payment feature that allows listeners to tip their favorite shows.
Lychee and Dragonfly are comparatively smaller, but also growing quickly. Lychee recently announced plans to raise $100 million in a U.S. initial public offering to support its product development, AI research and overseas expansion. In its prospectus, the Guangzhou-based company said that at the end of the third quarter, it had more than 46.6 million monthly active users and 5.7 million monthly active content creators. Dragonfly is the smallest of the three, but has cultivated a reputation for allowing new content creators to gain traction, instead of getting lost among Ximalaya’s roster of popular shows, and launched an international version of its app last year.
The (unknown) future of audio livestreaming in America
Though podcasts have been around for more than a decade, the business of producing, distributing and (maybe) making money off them has gained more attention over the past year, thanks in part to a series of acquisitions by Spotify: podcast networks Gimlet and Anchor and true crime podcast studio Parcast.
According to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report, the percentage of people in the U.S. who listen to podcasts grew to 51% in 2019 from 44% the year before. But even though podcasts hosted by celebrities or produced by major publishers have increased awareness of podcasts, most only make $0.01 in advertising revenue per listener hour, CRV investors Justine Moore and Olivia Moore wrote on TechCrunch, and most podcasters who want to make monetize need to find their own revenue channels. These often include direct response campaigns, where the podcaster provides a URL or promo code from a sponsor during their show, but those are often difficult to convert because listeners forget them, especially if they are commuting or doing other tasks while listening.
If audio livestreaming takes off outside of China, it may provide one solution to several of podcasting’s biggest challenges, including user interaction, community-building, discovery and monetization, especially for younger audiences. Like much of the podcast industry, however, its future, at least outside of China, is difficult to predict. But Ruan notes that short-form video and video livestreaming were both popular in China for several years before reaching the same level of awareness in the U.S. He believes audio livestreaming has the potential to become as popular in the U.S. as in China, but it may be adopted more slowly.
“Videostreaming was still niche in America while it was becoming very popular in China, and now it’s also popular there, though not to the same extent. Short-videos, like TikTok, also gained traction in China before America, and now its become extremely popular there, but only within the last two years,” says Ruan. “I think a lot of the reason is generational. Young people may be more receptive to audio livestreaming, just like they were more receptive to video, because they want want to listen to audio but also be able to communicate and discuss things.”