Has fatigue set in? A podcast may calm frayed nerves

Confined to home, and tired of watching reruns on video-streaming platforms and Zoom meetings? Plug in the headphones, scroll down the podcast lists on the likes of Spotify, Audible, Gaana or select one from your telecom network’s app. Choose ‘Horror Stories’ and a man’s calm voice talks just to you on what he experienced while driving down a desolate road... Over the last year or so, the pandemic has got India hooked onto the audio medium, especially podcasts. Many are using their earlier commute times to listen to discussions on an issue, latching on to this more immersive and intimate platform. And, unlike a video option where one has the gallery view of watching characters talk to each other, in an audio medium you feel the person on the other end of the line is having a conversation with you or telling a story just for you, a reason for its growing popularity, say experts. “…we are all in a state of fatigue with video. People are looking for a little bit of change and podcasts, because of its true nature of being a medium that you can consume while you’re doing something else, is kind of helping people to shift,” says Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director, Spotify India. The audio streaming platform has 2.5 million titles globally and Batra says the podcast catalogue in India is the “deepest”. The Indian market’s growth is “not far” from the 20% uptick that Spotify is seeing globally, he says, adding: “Parents are weaning their kids off the tablets and putting them on to Spotify, listening to good music or podcasts to get some kind of balance.” A PwC report pegged podcast advertising in India at $26 million and expects it to grow at 41% annually to reach $89 million by 2025. Podcast in India is seeing the high adoption rate that video and OTT streaming platforms saw a few years ago, say experts. “We launched in January 2019 with 100 hours of programming content … today have 1,300 hours of content in four languages across 22 genres,” says Sreeraman Thiagarajan, cofounder of Agrahyah Technologies which runs aawaz.com, an audio and podcast network. Humour, thriller/ horror, devotional programmes and stories are some of the top genres on Aawaz.''The platform plans to go deeper into the regional languages content and add more languages to the current English, Hindi, Urdu and Marathi content.

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