Stepping into his 15-square-meter studio, Internet podcast host Yang Yi has started recording a new edition of his program, Left-Right. Yang got into the podcast business two years ago, creating his own program, and before long, his own podcast company.

"At the very beginning, we had a program on Ximalaya, and our average listener numbers were only 10,000 or 20,000 – sometimes 40,000 or 50,000," Yang Yi, the chief operating officer at Podcasting and Digital Audio company said,

"But now, our most popular program Left-Right has more than 200,000 subscribers on just one of its platforms.“

The company now runs 11 programs on 10 audio platforms and is making more than 2 million yuan a year. Its podcasts include discussions on wine, music and the advertising business. And, of course, their business includes advertising too. Most of the money comes from clients who pay to insert mentions of their brand in the podcasts.

"Last October, two of our broadcasters were listed on the Forbes top under 30's list," Tu Zheng, the vice president of Ximalaya said. "That was the first time audio broadcasters made the list. There are now more than 1,000 audio streamers with monthly incomes over 100,000 yuan. Some are making more than 10 million yuan a year."

To cultivate more mature broadcasters, Ximalaya even has its own training program, which has so far turned out 250,000 trained professionals. With that much success, it's no surprise that there is tough competition from platforms like Qingting FM and LIZHI. Guangzhou-based LIZHI debuted on the Nasdaq in January, floating 4.1 million American Depositary Shares at a price to the public of 11 U.S. dollars apiece.

"In 2015, the mobile audio market went through a growth phase, and by In 2016 and 2017, the market matured with its business models and attracted tons of users. The market is also blurring its content from basically just pure audio content to incorporate livestreaming content and other forms," said Mintel research analyst Xu Xinyuan.

Xu said, "professionalized user-generated content in other segments such as e-learning, music streaming will attract non-audio based platforms to enter the market, thus intensifying the market competition."

The future of this industry looks promising. Analytics and consulting service platform iResearch says the current user penetration rate of music is 89 percent, with games 82 percent and online videos at 74 percent. The penetration rate of online audio is only 45 percent, however, suggesting substantial potential for growth.

"In 2018, most of our listeners were from Apple's iPodcast," Yang said. "But now that accounts for only 40 percent of our total, and 30 to 40 percent of our listeners are from domestic podcast apps. The rest are from Chinese audio platforms, like Ximalaya."

It's still early days in the business, however. Yang said revenue last year barely covered its expenses of between 200,000 and 300,000 a month. However, he is very optimistic about the future. 

As long as more people keep listening and more companies keep advertising, he will keep on recording.

(Cover via CFP)