Listening to podcasts can change your life.
Power Of Sound
Sound alone is responsible for most of the information delivered via video. Music 🎶 is a very powerful tool for entertainment and to increase one’s attention just like coffee.
Another benefit of sound is that you can do something else physically at the same time as listening. But that task needs to be mundane, like exercise, walking, cleaning something, driving etc.
Listening to an audio book while lying down on the sofa with eyes closed takes less effort than reading a book. Resulting in better focus on the topic being discussed and most importantly you cover more of the book in one sitting. Sometimes audio book is recorded by the author, in which case his sound adds a whole new layer of meaning to the words.
Audio only experience eliminates lot of the noise, both internal and external. Examples of internal noise are our beauty biases against the color of the skin, or biases against a particular ethnic background. Some examples of external noise are when the speaker, while speaking, looks the other way and we start thinking about what’s going on in his background. Or if there is a book shelf in the background we start looking at what books are sitting there etc.
Streaming Wars
As Spotify and Netflix reach a saturation point in North American market, they are turning to podcast industry to win against there competition and to keep growing their paid subscribers.
This war is resulting in a lot of investment in podcast industry and helping the industry to go mainstream.
Last year Spotify signed a multi-year deal with Joe Rogan (most popular podcaster) for $100 million.
Netflix hired former Apple executive N’Jeri Eaton, who will now lead Podcasting Operations at the company.
Amazon bought Wondery last year, which is among the largest podcast publishers in the U.S.
Apple introduced subscriptions this year, in there podcast app. Now creators can either charge for their podcast or offer ad free version plus some additional content to the paying customers. Thanks to this feature, Luminary podcasts are also now available in Apple Podcast app.
Sony Music bought buys Somethin’ Else in global podcast push.
Better than YouTube
YouTube is for videos and podcast is audio only. You can’t play a YouTube video on your mobile phone with the screen off nor have the same controls in the lockscreen as you have for podcasts. (Unless you use a modded YouTube app)
Most of the documentary or educational style videos are better to be listened to audio only; because it is vey hard to put visual material for the full length of the video that supplements the audio. Most of the time the video becomes a distraction and gets in the way of the message being delivered.
Easy For Content Creators
Creating a long video is way harder than creating an audio only experience. At the same time it is easy for the audience to consume compared to a video.
Sometimes creators don’t go deep into topics just because it might be boring so may lead viewers to stop watching. But when people are listening to podcasts they are also doing something else at the same time so they don’t mind a some boring stuff.
Listen to the podcast about this topic, in Urdu: Google Podcast, Apple Podcast
