The trend of paying for knowledge is fading, audio reading is breaking ground, and audio payment has entered a new stage. After a long period of hibernation, China’s audiobook market has entered a phase of rapid growth, with a market size of 3.24 billion yuan in 2017, up 34.8% year on year, and expected to reach 4.54 billion yuan in 2018, according to iMedia Consulting.

Audio books, though not many billions of market scale, but they waiting game, competitors are also gradually increased, in addition to the lazy listening, such as oxygen catch old platform is listening, the Himalayan knowledge such as FM, dragonflies FM paid players in the audio book market also occupies the important one seat, a new entry, and dangdang, jingdong reading, zhihu, etc.

From the user’s point of view, audio reading is better than paying for knowledge in that there is no anxiety, it is more entertaining, and there is no need to worry about timeliness. Reading length is optional, and it is suitable for consumption in any fragmented time. At the industry level, the sound economy is ushering in, and audio reading can be used as a supplement to audio content, while satisfying the preferences of knowledge seekers and literary youth.

Tuyere came, the old listening platform are ready to fight?

Over-reliance on Reading group, lazy people listening to the lack of ecological competitiveness

According to imedia, the top three audio books by active users are Ximalaya FM, Dragonfly FM and Lazy Listener. But in terms of “listening to books”, the vertical field is the peak of lazy people listening to books. Lazy people listening to books and the industry of the Buddha, very low-key, low-key from the network copyright a hegemony reading literature group as a backing, to rely on. However, lazy people listening to books is also a platform for users to love and hate, what love is not much to say, we say “hate” it.

One hate: over-reliance on China Literature for content

As also read, lose also read. As a subsidiary of Yuewen group, There is no worry or anxiety about copyright, because yuewen’s platform will give priority to the audiobooking of novels. Compared with other audiobooking platforms, The advantage of Laorenlushu is reading literature, but the disadvantage also lies in this. Lazy people listen to books like a “mother treasure”, the content is extremely dependent on reading. According to the data of Yiguan, the content of lazy people listen to books constitutes 75% of the web articles and 25% of the published books, and 75% of the Copyrights of the adaptation of web articles almost come from reading articles. And the cooperation of publishing books is often mediated by reading articles, such as anhui Publishing Group, which has just reached cooperation.

Lazy people listen to books excessively rely on Yuewen, yuewen is not so short, yuewen owns the copyright resources of Yuewen Group and Ximalaya, and the overlap rate of audio novels between the two is very high. From the hot recommendation list alone, more than 2/3 of the top 20 books can be found on Ximalaya. Although there are some exclusive copyright content for lazy people to listen to books, according to the platform, 9%, but these exclusive content does not bear the load of clicks, just shows that users do not have too much attraction, it is not an advantage.

Lazy people listen to the content of the competitiveness of geometry, easy to see a few groups of data can be intuitive presentation? Ximalaya FM has more than 170 copyright partners, including China Publishing House, Penguin Random, etc., occupying 70% of the best-selling audio rights. Dragonfly FM’s number of copyright partners is 150+, including Iread, Chinese online, but lazy people listen to the book of copyright partners only 80+. In terms of quantity and quality, the content resources of lazy readers fall behind.

Another set of data also reflects that the content of lazy people listening to books is relatively simple. As of Q1 2018, the majority of lazy people listening to books are men born in the 1980s, and only 27.54% are women, indicating that the content or operation style tends to be masculine. Looking back at the history of the Development of the Internet, platforms with too single user structure have relatively low ceilings, and it will become one of the development challenges for male platforms to balance the gender ratio in the later stage.

Look at the third set of data, in December 2017 the lazy listening time-sharing user behavior on 11-13 points, has not been a peak in the evening, and night is a short video user behavior relatively concentrated period of time, occupies a large number of users of fragmented time short video for lazy people listen listen platform also caused a certain impact, also reflected in the lack of attractive content.

Hate 2: the business model is not mature, the main profit still depends on advertising

Although the active users are less than Ximalaya FM, only 30%, the average daily usage time is the highest among the three platforms, reaching 73.47 minutes, and the average daily startup times reaches 8.14 times. But unfortunately, these loyal users have failed to promote the commercial value of lazy listening.

The company’s main executive said in an interview that the company’s profit model is divided into three types: advertising, paid listening and membership purchase. However, according to another public information, only 3% of the audiobooks paid for lazy Listening are paid for by lazy Listening, which is much lower than other platforms. The business model of paying for audiobooks for lazy people is still immature, with advertising rather than content being the main source of revenue.

An interesting phenomenon was also found in the search for lazy reader, that is, the search engine provided quite a number of search results related to “cracked version”, but this phenomenon did not appear in other apps. It can be imagined that there are not a few lazy reader users who believe that listening to books should be free, and their paying habits need to be cultivated.

Relying on advertising revenue means that the platform is likely to sacrifice user experience for profit, which is what many users complain about when lazy people listen to books.

Hate 3: Audio book copyright confusion, lazy listening to the book can not be immune

In March this year, Ximalaya FM was reprimanded by zeng Pengyu and other writers for copyright infringement. Any audio book platform encourages UGC content can not escape the question of copyright confusion, Himalayan and dragonflies FM previously rectify infringing content for many times, but failed to fundamentally put an end to such incidents, despite a lazy person listening reading this copyright users sincerely invite, also failed to escape from the eye to check on the lazy people can catch the end of last year had been trapped in tort incidents, You can see the seriousness of the audio book rights mess.

Explore the reasons, one is the audio book copyright become the business model of time is very short, does not exist the novel copyright audiobooks film adaptation, this novel into audio works, such as radio is also more user authorization received from the author, free of charge to participate in the production, is generally regarded as a novel fringe benefits. Under the concept of free for a long time, readers lack a correct understanding of audio book copyright. Second, the platform of UGC is encouraged to connive at or fail to supervise infringing content due to rapid development and other factors, aggravating the occurrence of infringing events.

In addition to the above three points, the ecological layout of lazy listening book is only smart home and Internet of vehicles. Compared with Ximalaya FM and Dragonfly FM, the ecological layout is not perfect, and the ecological competitiveness is relatively weak.

Compared with the lack of excess, lazy people listening to books must supplement strength

Although lazy listening to books is a leader in the vertical sector, with the entry of players such as Zhihu, audio payment fields such as knowledge payment, audio reading and audio live streaming are also converging. Ximalaya, the successful reference of zhihu Youknowledge payment and audio reading, has a group of mature paying users. As a reading platform and book e-commerce provider, Dangdang and JINGdong can bundle audio books with physical books to acquire physical book users… New entrants have a certain amount of resources behind the accumulation, and the overall competitiveness of lazy people listening to books is not good, more than the next but insufficient, but also need to make full use of backing reading, enhance strength.

China’s audiobook industry came into being late, while American audiobook industry has developed a certain scale and maintained steady growth. According to iMedia Consulting, the sales of downloaded audiobook increased by 30.2% from January to August 2017, maintaining a growth rate of nearly 20% for three consecutive years, while the overall sales performance of American book market was sluggish. The U.S. audio book market is a very favorable reference for the development of audio book platforms in China.

1. Take advantage of celebrity

As for how to expand the volume of audio books and raise the ceiling of the industry, different platforms take different measures. Himalayan FM and Dragonfly FM like to create festivals, such as 123 Knowledge Pay Festival and 423 Listening Festival. Lazy readers, on the other hand, participate in a good cause or public service to make audio books available to more people.

Actually, compared with the build section, the most effective way or celebrity, knowledge paid KOL as the guidance, such as gao xiaosong and partial entertainment audio book can not only guided by the content of the novel, also can use celebrity effect, there are many cases in overseas markets, such as Anne hathaway, read the princess diaries, Alan li-man ai read the return of the native “.

China Mobile’s audiobooks are dominated by young users, with users under 30 accounting for 63.4 percent, according to iMedia Research. Young users are just the main consumers of voice actor economy after the outbreak of sound economy. Ximalaya has famous anchor Zijin, dragonfly FM has the champion Zhu Yawen of “Sound In its Environment”… Lazy people can also start with well-known dubbing actors. They can invite well-known dubbing actors such as Ah Jie and Wu Lei, who are known for their dubbing in games such as Love and Producer, to read their works. Programs such as The Reader and Words like Face can also invite celebrities to read literary works, and so on, in order to attract more female users and celebrity fans.

2. Full linkage with reading

Now Chinese audio books and e-books, article, or separate operation mode, in order to satisfy the readers don’t have time to reading under the fragmentation of time, the starting point, jinjiang and other literature platform with built-in voice reading function, compared with the mechanical sound synthesis, voice reading can deduce the atmosphere of the novel, perhaps it is time to voice reading direct replacement for the audio book content.

Previously mentioned, reading text is the biggest advantage of lazy people listening to books, lazy people listening to books should make good use of this sign. For example, Readers who subscribe to novels on Yuewen’s platform can enjoy a discount if they subscribe to audio books. The profitability of this model has been proven in the United States, Canada and other markets and is favored by more retailers.

3. Create audio book copyright fair

The mainstream listening platforms mostly operate, develop and distribute audio books independently. Audio book publishing has not yet formed an industry, and adaptation is mainly concentrated in the head works. There is a lack of a platform in the form of a market for authors to independently find readers to cooperate in producing audio books. Best-selling novels can bring readers to audiobooks, and in turn, good audiobooks can serve as a promotion channel for online novels or published books, driving consumption.

The competition in the audiobook market will eventually come back to content, and this format will attract more waists to expand the quantity and quality of audiobook content.

To sum up, audiobooks are finally coming into their own. However, lazy people who rely too much on content, have immature business models and lack ecological competitiveness need to supplement their strength to fend off the growing number of entrants who want to share the cake. Referring to the experience of mature markets, making full use of celebrity effect, increasing linkage with reading literature, and providing audio book adaptation channels for waist creators can comprehensively improve the strength of lazy people to listen to books.

Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110