When people talk about the future of audio, we cannot stay out of it. That is why we attended the Radiodays Europe conference, which invites the world’s leading radio professionals. This year it was held in Athens, and the main message was clear: podcasts and AI are taking centre stage.
The traditional industry conference Radiodays Europe took place in Athens from 9 to 11 March, under the motto “Designing the Future of Audio”. And the future of audio is unsurprisingly in podcasts and the use of AI technologies. These are precisely the areas we work in too. We deploy AI wherever it makes sense. We were the first in the Czech Republic to use it for broadcasting news with an AI avatar, and we even used it to make podcasts too. And we have long believed in podcasts, which is why we run the České podcasty platform, organise Podcast roku, and develop the YouRadio Talk app and other projects.
A new phenomenon: Audio Series
One of the biggest wow moments of this year’s conference was the presentation of Audio Series from the Indian startup Pocket FM. This phenomenon earned $250 million from micro-payments last year (!!!), even though it has existed for only four years. It is essentially the Netflix of audiobooks: a series structure, episodic format and well-targeted content. Pocket FM now plans to expand into Europe and relies not only on strong stories but also on AI, which is meant to help with localisation and personalisation of content.
AI and automation are no novelty in audio. They were first discussed at Radiodays in Prague two years ago as well. Today it is clear, however, that AI is not just a concept but is actually helping with automating advertising formats, speeding up the production of spots or localising content into other languages. For example, the Radiozeit service enables automatic real-time subtitling, so you can “listen” to the radio with subtitles too.
Data from Spotify
Spotify, which does not usually reveal much of its data, surprised this time and published several interesting statistics on podcasting. There are currently 6.5 million podcasts on its platform, and over 100 million people listen to them worldwide.
The biggest trend is video podcasts. In the USA their popularity grew from 43% to 64%, and in Brazil even to 75%. The most common formats are studio recordings (59%) and “talking heads” (37%). Interestingly, podcasts do not replace listening to music, but rather extend the time people spend on streaming platforms.
Podcasting has long struggled with a lack of verified data, but the situation is slowly changing. The USA, Australia and the Netherlands already have the Podcast Ranker from Triton Digital, which provides audited data. Denmark has recently been added too, and who knows, maybe one day we will see it in the Czech Republic as well. Podcasts live in a digital environment, yet a complete picture of their performance across platforms is still missing, and that could change soon. That is exactly why we are trying to achieve it within the České podcasty platform too, and we already have interesting data. For example, every month around 200 new podcasts appear in the Czech Republic, but only a tenth survive.
New business opportunities thanks to AI
On the business side, we were struck by the Spotwise.ai tool, which analyses competitors’ broadcasts in real time and looks for new business opportunities, including finding contacts. We see that podcasters are professionalising and looking for ways to monetise, which is incidentally exactly where media houses can help them.
The Radiodays Europe conference confirmed that audio is doing wonderfully even in the age of social networks and is a way to reach the young generation. AI, new formats and smart monetisation models are opening enormous possibilities, and the best of audio is yet to come!
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