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Once upon a time, countless experts and scholars had heated discussions on whether the emergence of e-books would make paper books disappear, and whether digital reading would replace traditional reading methods. Today, it is still unclear whether e-books or paper books will win or lose, but the rapid development of digital reading in our country is indeed an indisputable fact.

As of the end of 2017, my country's mobile reading market has gradually matured, and industry operations have become more refined. The number of online literature users has reached 378 million, a month-on-month increase of 13.37%, and audio reading is booming. Until July this year, professional audio reading platforms such as Lizhi (formerly known as Lizhi FM) and Lanren Tingshu had completed financing. In September 2017, Dragonfly FM set a record for the highest single round of financing in the Internet audio industry of 1 billion yuan.

Frequent and huge amounts of financing demonstrate the prosperity of this industry, and the growth rate of 39.5% in 2018 shows the huge potential of audio reading. So, what is driving the rapid growth of audio platforms? What attracts these investors to provide large amounts of financial support? Is the booming industry behind these financings real?

Seizing the contradiction between supply and demand, audio reading is booming

To solve the above problems, we must start with what audio reading is. The so-called audio reading refers to providing audio book reading services through web pages, client and other technologies, using PCs, smartphones, tablets, vehicles, wearable devices, etc. as carriers. The content includes novels, radio stations, film and television original sounds, news information, etc. The carrier has also experienced the evolution from radio, CD, Internet to mobile Internet. Moreover, the emergence of audio reading is not accidental, but caused by the increasing contradiction between supply and demand and the emergence of emerging technologies. To sum up, there are three points:

First of all, readers’ demand for audio reading is increasing. With the development of society and the advancement of technology, people's time has become more and more fragmented, and their visual functions have been over-exploited. The market demand for audiobooks is increasing day by day. Although this has promoted the redevelopment of traditional media represented by radio, radio also has shortcomings. Its information transmission is too one-way. People cannot choose what to listen to according to their own time and preferences. The audience can only passively accept it, thus wasting a lot of fragmented time. Moreover, out of consideration for physical health, more and more people choose to "listen to books" instead of "read books", and the market's desire for audio platforms is becoming increasingly strong.

Secondly, audio reading caters to the profit needs of content parties. Traditional audio publishing mostly relies on editors to screen works. Professional editors usually make selections based on experience and intuition, and give priority to the economic benefits brought by the works. However, in the long run, many talented authors will be ignored, leaving the creative group with no passion for creation but no marketing channel. Moreover, for traditional audiobook publishers, how to ensure effective sales channels is also a big problem. Traditional audio publications have high costs and long production cycles. If sales cannot be guaranteed, it will cause serious inventory pressure and affect the profitability of publishing houses. Therefore, establishing a brand new platform is the need of all parties.

Finally, technological breakthroughs have promoted the development of audio reading. The development of digital technology and the Internet has built a perfect bridge for this contradiction between supply and demand. Digital signals replace analog signals and become the new content carrier. Breakthroughs in technology have made it easier and smoother to convert audio products between different media forms, and the threshold for converting text content into audio products in different formats for production and dissemination is getting lower and lower. Not only that, in the Internet era, the obstacles of time and space have also been greatly reduced, which provides conditions for the publishing house to "give priority to economic benefits." The emergence of new technologies has made it cheaper for audio platforms to copy and distribute readings, which has greatly promoted the development of audio reading.

It is precisely because of the discovery of this contradiction between supply and demand in the market, coupled with the strong demand from audiences, content providers and publishers, that the Internet audio platform came into being. Since then, audio reading has developed rapidly, and major audio platforms have completed financing one after another: Dragonfly FM completed 1 billion yuan in financing in September 2017; Lychee FM officially changed its name to Litchi in January 2018, and at the same time, a US$50 million round D financing was in place; Lanren Tingshu announced the completion of round C financing of 200 million yuan in June 2018. Ximalaya FM, the leading audio platform company, has been rumored to be listed four times this year, which shows the market's desire for audio platforms.

Is frequent and high-amount financing real prosperity or false prosperity?

According to big data, my country's adult national digital reading rate has continued to grow for eight consecutive years since 2009. As of 2017, it has increased to more than 70%, and the national comprehensive reading rate has reached more than 80%. While the national reading demand continues to increase, the market acceptance of digital reading methods is good. From the perspective of the digital reading industry, the richness of digital reading content is expanding. User consumption demand and willingness to pay have significantly improved. User activity, average daily usage time and number of usage data have performed well. Digital reading has become an important channel for users to read. The change in demand pattern has provided good opportunities for audio platforms, and various audio platforms have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

The first one to appear was Dragonfly FM, which was launched in September 2011. The platform focuses on live broadcasting and PGC (professionally produced content). It has large-scale cooperative relationships with opinion leaders and self-media people, and has the advantages of good resources and high quality content. It has always been at the core of the industry and even proposed the "PUGC" strategy in 2015. Ximalaya FM, which was launched in 2013, is completely different. The Ximalaya FM model was established in August 2012, but the APP was launched in 2013. It follows the route of rich and comprehensive content and a wide audience, focusing on "UGC" (user-generated content).

Although Dragonfly FM has always had a wait-and-see attitude towards "UGC" and is not very optimistic about the prospects of socialization on the platform, its profit model is still based on "advertising + content payment", which is slightly weak compared with competitors in the industry. But as early as 2014, it began to combine artificial intelligence with audio and established close ties with Baidu Auto. Later, it became the exclusive partner for traditional radio station listening in Baidu’s Apollo plan. And this combination of "content payment" + "artificial intelligence" has attracted up to 1 billion yuan in financing.

However, input and output are not directly proportional. in June this yearXiao Yi, COO of Dragonfly FM, once said in an interview that "Currently, Dragonfly FM is still unprofitable, but Dragonfly FM's losses are very small." This surprised people. After all, in the content-based audio reading industry, companies under the PGC model have more advantages and it is easier to make profits, not to mention that Dragonfly FM has long begun to combine audio reading with other industries and seek new development paths.

In contrast, Ximalaya FM's initial positioning of the platform was to establish a large platform that simultaneously serves multiple groups such as audiences, advertisers, content producers, and traditional publishing media. It is precisely because of these different groups that Ximalaya FM must consider corporate development issues from different angles, create its own unique platform ecosystem, and form a good profit model: in addition to the traditional "advertising + content payment", it also boldly launches various value-added services, such as hardware equipment business for users and upstream value-added services for content producers. The main purpose of these measures is not to make money, but to increase user stickiness for the sustainable development of the platform. Facts have proved that the results are quite effective, and Ximalaya FM has become a first-class enterprise in the industry. Despite this, with the market so eager for audio platforms, this "big brother" has not yet been listed on the market, and there have only been several rumors that it will be listed.

When the two giants in the industry have encountered varying degrees of development problems, the homogeneous competition between the two has become very obvious. When there is no obvious gap in terms of models and users, "fighting for money" seems to have become the last resort, and the industry is about to face huge changes. At this time, the funds brought by financing are weapons for "fighting" or "self-protection" between platforms. This also explains from the side why there is so much financing in the audio reading industry.

Litchi, which was also launched in 2013, appears to be very "willful" compared with the first two - under the industry trend of "fighting for money", it decisively transformed and withdrew from the FM battlefield. Lychee has attracted a group of die-hard fans with its literary and fresh label. Although it has occupied a place in the market, it has also restricted the development of Lychee. It cannot make major changes and can only follow the path of niche. However, the "UGG" path it adheres to has become a constraint for the radio station. The content cannot be guaranteed, which makes the platform insufficient in follow-up and gradually lags behind its competitors in the industry. Therefore, when the financing was completed in January this year, it was officially renamed "Lizhi", shifted the main battlefield to voice live broadcast, and withdrew from the FM battlefield. At the same time, according to Litchi CEO Lai Yilong, Litchi Voice Live has achieved a monthly revenue of nearly 100 million in less than a year and a half since it was launched in October 2016 to January this year, and has formed a large-scale operation.

In addition, companion audio based on WeChat public accounts, such as Ten O'clock Reading, Night Listening, etc., and products targeting specific groups such as primary and secondary school students, women, etc., are constantly emerging. Vertical products represented by Lazy Listening Book and audio apps launched by companies such as NetEase and Tencent have also received financing one after another, and the audio market is booming. But behind this prosperity, we are faced with the huge problem that large companies are about to "come into close combat" and small companies find it difficult to sustain development.

The industry is facing huge changes, how can audio platforms cope with it?Spending a "cold winter"?

From 2012 to 2018, the scale of the domestic audio reading market continued to grow, with the three years from 2016 to 2018 being the fastest growing years for the audio reading market. According to big data, the audio reading market size is expected to be 3.1 billion yuan in 2017. However, the "2017 Digital Reading White Paper" released in April 2018 showed that the audio reading market size reached 4.06 billion yuan in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 39.7%. This data greatly exceeded the market's previous expectations of 3.1 billion yuan.

The rapid development of the market has driven the growth of audio platforms. The mushrooming audio platforms have saturated the market and made market competition more intense. The most eye-catching one is the homogeneous competition between the two giants in the industry, Himalaya FM and Dragonfly FM. One mainly promotes UGC and the other mainly promotes PGC. The two have been in fierce competition since their launch. Dragonfly FM, which has raised billions in financing, has yet to make a profit. Ximalaya FM, which has a well-established industry scale, has been listed on the market. It is so difficult to lead the industry in a fiercely competitive market environment. How should other platforms develop? Taking the relatively successful industry "big brother" Ximalaya FM as an example, the author believes that the following points can be learned:

First, the profit model is the core. Ximalaya FM adopts a policy of high openness and low threshold, which has attracted a large number of author groups to the platform. The corresponding readership group uses "free" and "subsidized" as introductions to ignite the demand for this part of the market. The accumulation of readers has attracted more advertisers to the platform, which has gradually expanded its scale, formed its unique multilateral ecosystem, and created a new profit model.

Second, content construction is king. Ximalaya FM mainly takes three measures: supervision, guidance and support in content construction. First, strengthen the platform's supervision and filtering of content to ensure the high quality of the content and make up for the shortcomings of the UGC mode that the content is weaker than the PGC mode. Secondly, the market must be divided more carefully to break the gap between the audience and the market and guide the audience's consumption. At the same time, it is also conducive to giving full play to the multilateral effect of the platform and consolidating the platform's market position. You know, a platform that lacks refinement can easily be taken away by new competitors. Thirdly, it is to support content creators. As the development of audio platforms becomes increasingly mature, how to attract and cultivate excellent content creators at the lowest cost has become the key to the development of the platform.

Third, copyright protection is the key point. In June 2010, Ximalaya FM launched its first high-quality paid course - Ma Dong's "Speak Well". It thought it would make a lot of money, but it was hit hard by pirated courses sold on Taobao, and the project profits shrank seriously. Since then, the platform has begun the process of copyright protection and won the China Copyright Most Influential Enterprise Award in 2016.

Generally speaking, the emergence of the audio platform is an innovative move by the traditional publishing industry to seek new development in the "Internet +" field. It promotes the industrial upgrading of the traditional publishing industry and brings new vitality to the market. But at the same time, audio platforms still have a lot of problems, such as content quality, copyright loopholes, weak profitability, etc. How to establish a good platform ecosystem has become the key to solving the problems. We look forward to future changes in audio platforms!