Audio is growing at a rare rate.
According to CIC, the annual growth rate of China's ** audio market is about 694%, and the market size is expected to further grow to 120.1 billion yuan by 2025.
When the entire mobile Internet industry is in stock trouble, the double-digit growth provided by the audio market is even more rare.
There are traces of all this.
More and more young users are embracing the medium of audio: after station B was made into a "learning Xi", people began to "occupy seats" in the Himalayas, creating a new way of using it;The post-00s generation has also begun to be keen to listen to long audio in their Xi and work and leisure time, and use it as a new entertainment lifestyle.
In the case that Chang ** is still struggling to explore the direction of profitability, "Long Audio", an old track that has experienced a long period of development, horse racing and drastic reshuffle, has taken the lead in bringing a deterministic increase to players in the new traffic dividend, which may not have been expected by many people.
At the same time, as the largest audio platform in China, Ximalaya has finally "waited" for rare sustainable profits.
In January this year, Yu Jianjun, founder and CEO of Himalaya, disclosed that Himalaya achieved a profit of 10 million yuan in a single quarter for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2022, which is the first time that Himalaya has achieved profitability in ten years.
Recently, a number of people close to Himalaya revealed to Shentong Business that since the fourth quarter of last year, Himalaya has been profitable for four consecutive quarters (2022Q4-2023Q3), and has reached a revenue balance in the second half of 2022Its full-scene MUA also increased from 2 in the third quarter of last year8.4 billion increased to 34.5 billion.
Under the sluggish growth of the entire online content industry, the audio brother "surfaced", which may be a landmark event.
Over the past decade, audio has never been a hot track. The long-term Red Sea competition in the audio track, which has always been regarded as a low "technical threshold", determines that players must invest large operating costs, grab content, expand the market, and seek scale with losses.
But now, as the industry enters the second half, more users are Xi enjoying the entertainment of freeing their hands and listening with their ears, and the track mode is gradually maturing.
Of course, players must also return to rational logic, and while seeking increments, polish a better profit model, which will become the focus of the next stage of competition in the industry.
1. How did the ten-year audio track "wait" for new increments?
The monthly active users exceed 300 million, indicating that over the past ten years of content ecological development, the audio track has indeed grown a "soil" that is different from other platforms.
According to Shentong Business, in the third quarter of 2023, the Mau of Himalaya full scene will reach 34.5 billion. Among them, the year-on-year growth rate of mobile MAU was 212%, and the year-on-year growth rate of DAU in all scenarios was 122%。
Under the squeeze of short **, many content platform users continue to decline, and this series of data is still relatively eye-catching in comparison.
Why is it the audio track that eats the increment?There must be other answers besides "deep ploughing".
*In the audio industry, user stickiness and content ecology are the key to the survival of the platform. In the recent upgrade of Ximalaya's organizational structure, it has also re-emphasized that it will shift from growth-driven to in-depth user value creation-oriented.
In the early stage of the development of the track, audio platforms such as Ximalaya used UGC, PUGC, and PGC to capture the diverse needs of users, encourage a large number of creators to participate in content production and sharing, and form a first-mover advantage.
However, full coverage of content is only the first step, and content exclusivity is the key to the problem.
The intuitive feeling of users is that the audio track can hear content that is not difficult to find on other content platforms. For example, the cognition of Himalaya in the minds of users is also rooted in its differentiated content and services.
First, from the upstream point of view, Himalaya has a close relationship with the upstream industry, and has established long-term cooperative relations with film and television platforms and publishers.
This allows it to not only have a large number of IPs to ensure the continuous supply of content, but also become the preferred platform for the audio version of popular film and television IPs, such as the audio content such as "Hurricane", "Three-Body Problem" and "The Wandering Earth 2", which have been prioritized recentlyand various works in the past few years, such as "Celebrating More Than Years", "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "The World" and so on.
It is important to emphasize here that on the basis of the uniqueness of the content, today's audio content needs to be more carefully produced.
For example, the audio drama "The Legend of Zhen Huan", which will be launched in March 2023, took a total of one year to prepare and produce the work, and the platform found the original voice actors of the film and television drama to ensure the original audio content.
This may mean that the Matthew effect will be more obvious in the future for large platforms that can invest heavily for a long time.
Second, from the downstream point of view, occupying key channels is also the focus of the platform.
In terms of content terminals, leading companies in the fields of smart homes, smart speakers and smart cars have all accessed Himalaya's content.
For example, in terms of Internet of Vehicles, the platform has cooperated with more than 95% of automobile companies such as Tesla, Porsche, Jaguar Land Rover, BMW, and Audi.
In addition to the increase in the basic market, major platforms have also set their sights on new markets in the past two years. Himalaya, Small Universe, NetEase Cloud**, etc. have all invested heavily in the podcast track. According to data released by Himalaya, the number of podcast listeners on the platform currently exceeds 1600 million.
At the same time, it was revealed that the year-on-year growth rate of Mau in the third quarter of the Himalayan live broadcast business was also close to 40%.
In addition, while based on audio, the audio platform also has the spare strength to seize the new hot spot of short dramas. In 2023, this market is still in the stage of savage growth, and there are not many phenomenal works. Himalaya has also launched the "Helywood Project", based on its copyright, anchor resources, etc., trying to find its place in this highly imaginative new market.
It remains to be seen how much space the new track will have.
However, on the whole, the overall business logic of audio platforms such as Himalaya has not changed significantly in recent years, focusing on stabilizing profitability and improving quality and efficiency.
The news of Himalaya's continued profitability undoubtedly gives people a reason to re-examine the ** audio track, in addition, it also provides a certain reference for Internet content platforms to determine their long-term business strategies.
2. Profitable for four consecutive quarters, what is the "hematopoietic" logic of the Himalayas?
Himalaya, which is in the first echelon, has been not far from profitability in the past, only "one breath away".
From the perspective of the key issues of profitability, first, Ximalaya already has a relatively complete business monetization model, from paid subscriptions to advertising and live broadcast business, it has the ability to convert traffic into monetization, and the business structure is relatively reasonable.
Second, paid subscriptions, as the pillar of revenue, have been providing a certain "expectation" of monetization as the market environment changes and the content ecosystem moat is established. When the market turns to audio, rapid growth in the scale of payment can be expected.
In recent years, users have become more willing to spend in Himalayas. According to the previous prospectus, the average monthly active paying users of Himalaya mobile reached 14.9 million in 2021, an increase of 48% from 20201%;In addition, according to iiMedia Consulting data, in the first half of 2021, the platform with the highest satisfaction of paying users among China's ** audio platforms is the Himalaya platform, with a satisfaction rate of 85%.
With the release of the first-class audio traffic dividend, the business scale of Himalaya has continued to expand in recent years, and the profitability of the enterprise will naturally increase under the scale effect. Since the fourth quarter of 2022, Himalaya has continued to make profits, and the company's cash flow has turned positive.
In addition to the basic growth trend in the income structure, it is also because of the efficiency improvement brought about by cost reduction and efficiency increase.
In terms of production mode, Ximalaya has extended from PGC and UGC to AIGC, and has provided a lot of support for reducing production costs, reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
According to sources, the listening volume of Himalayan AIGC production content in September this year accounted for nearly 5% of the total listening;Compared to December 2 last yearThe 5% share has almost doubled.
Specifically, the production of thousands or tens of thousands of audiobooks through AIGC can replace human reading, which reduces the cost investment of the platform. At the same time, the use of AI technology to provide creators with more efficient production tools can also improve the operation efficiency of the content ecosystem and fundamentally reduce operating costs.
According to the information, at present, Himalaya has widely used automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology and speech synthesis (TTS) technology in the production of storytelling, news, ** and other content.
The team of the Himalayan Everest Laboratory created more than 370,000 audiobooks**, and AIGC works have exceeded 2.5 million hours per day.
Of course, the application of AIGC requires continuous investment. For example, Himalaya has set up the "Shan Tianfang Voice Reproduction" project.
In order to reproduce the style of Shan Tianfang's storytelling, the platform needs to invest a lot of R&D manpower and time cost in exploring key technologies such as emotion recognition, role recognition, and character recognition, so as to finally achieve the effect of "confusing the real with the false".
Himalaya, which has already achieved profitability, may have an advantage: after no longer relying absolutely on external financing, the platform can more rationally and long-term estimate the costs and benefits of infrastructure investment.
Recently, Ximalaya also mentioned that it will promote the development of new businesses from the level of business process optimization, such as the iteration of multi-modal, software and hardware combination, and panoramic sound technology in AIGC.
It is not easy for the audio "slow business" of ten years to finally continue to make profits. What is even more difficult is to truly adhere to the long-term business strategy, and adhere to the content and technology accumulation that has been the same for many years. This is especially true for the ever-changing Internet industry.
But in the end, the "moat" of the enterprise always needs to be built brick by brick.