Indian users, who are listening to audio series — or serialised audio fiction — for more than a year, spend 90 minutes a day on these platforms, said a report by Redseer.
This indicates a high engagement rate of mature listeners of audio series on platforms such as Spotify, Pocket FM, or Kuku FM.
“In early adopting markets like India, users who have spent less than 6 months on the platform were seen to spend about 1.3 hours per day. This went up to 1.5 hours in case of users who had spent more than 1 year on the platform,” the report said.
Although still in nascency, audio series has been the fastest growing entertainment segment over the past two years. As opposed to music or audiobooks, which are mature segments growing nearly 20% between 2021-23, audio series segment jumped 640% over these past two years.
Unlike podcasts that have a conversational format offering informational content or audiobooks that are based on novels, audio series is a flexible entertainment option available in episodes and on-demand. “With mostly casual and light content, it doesn’t require active attention and can be played by users to keep themselves entertained while performing other tasks,” the report noted.
Another feature that aided engagement levels of audio series is micropayments, or the pay-per-content feature that allowed more than 80% of paid users to pay for content they want to consume rather than subscribing to the entire library. This payment feature has brought the average revenue per user of audio series at par with other entertainment formats.
Audio series currently has a paid user base of around 10-11%, similar to that of streaming services in India, although the latter has a much larger and mature user base. Besides the paid user base, the engagement levels of audio series is close to video streaming and are about two times that of music.
“The high engagement levels can be attributed to the untapped use cases and the need gaps filled by audio series as opposed to all other entertainment formats. As users mature on the platform, the engagement levels are expected to go higher,” the report said.
Financially, audio series platforms are able to rake in up to 70% contribution margin on every finished hour of content, which can go as high as 75% in the next three years as monetisation increases, Redseer analysts estimate.
Not just in India, globally too, the segment has around 1.3 billion addressable users translating to an opportunity of $21-25 billion.