Inside China’s burgeoning “ear economy”
The online audio sector, or aptly nicknamed “ear-economy” in China, consists of various content forms from music, internet radio, audiobooks, and podcasts, to new options such as social audio and live voice. Not surprisingly, mobile music has long been a beloved media and entertainment in China. A 2021 mobile user survey showed that slightly over 70 percent of respondents spent 30 minutes to two hours on mobile music every day.Thanks to their easy access and transportation, audiobooks, predominantly audio drama, have been gaining traction. More and more parents use audiobooks as a teaching tool and audiobook usage was steadily going up among children and teenagers. In addition, digital text-to-audio has been gaining momentum with AI advancements. On the other hand, podcasting is still a fledgling industry in China, given major challenges in content production, RSS technology (an open method to deliver latest web content to subscribers), and limited directories. Nonetheless, the number of podcast listeners was set to hit 100 million by 2022, partly accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
