Who killed who?

The victim: Hae Min Lee, a Baltimore County high school student. She was strangled to death in 1999. And the killer: Er, it’s complicated…

And what’s the future of audio got to do with it?

A weekly podcast featuring the real-life story of Min Lee is making waves across the globe. ‘Serial’, a spinoff of US National Public Radio’s This American Life show re-examines the 1999 murder and the conviction of Adnan Syed, Min Lee’s former boyfriend. Syed is now serving life imprisonment for the crime, though he has repeatedly said he is innocent. The podcast, which appears every Thursday, ended its 12-week run on Thursday, December 18, and has become a huge Internet sensation, giving a hitherto unseen fillip to podcasting business.

What kind of a sensation?

The show, hosted by reporter Sarah Koenig, became the most successful podcast in history, reaching an average of 2.2 million listeners per episode. Koenig spent a year looking into the tiniest of details of the Min Lee murder, tracing and talking to almost all the witnesses.

Over its 12 episodes, ‘Serial’ got over five million downloads and streams on Apple iTunes itself, faster than any other podcast. Many millions listened to it using sources such as SoundCloud and other podcasting apps. Serial remains in the top spot for most popular podcast in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

Wow!

The murder mystery podcast has gone viral on social media as well. For instance, a group on Reddit, called a subreddit, uses the site to discuss ‘Serial’ and has more than 28,000 members. Some of them are so moved by the story that they are actually raising a fund to support Syed. ‘Serial’ also triggered conspiracy theories and parodies on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Podcasters must be happy!

Yes. The success has prompted many new podcasting ventures. A new podcasting startup, Gimlet Media, produces a podcast show about starting a podcast startup. Media mavens are calling this a ‘podcasting renaissance’. Many now prefer podcasts to radio.

Will ‘podio’ kill the radio star?

Not yet. Radio is still popular across the globe. In the US itself, terrestrial radio covers 92 per cent of the population, while only 15 per cent listen to podcasts. That said, analysts say the shift from scheduled programming to on-demand content, which is threatening TV now, can challenge radio as well.

Is podcasting a recent affair?

Well, it started about 10 years ago. Those days podcasting meant radio-style broadcasts for devices such as the Apple iPod. Users would download audio files and sync them to the devices. But now web-enabled smartphones help people stream podcasts in a matter of seconds. The rise of smartphones, cloud-enabled cars and streaming services can help the podcast industry grow manifold.

According to an Edison Research study, in 2014, 51 per cent of the podcast listeners in the US accessed shows via smartphones, against 34 per cent in 2013. Streaming services such as Spotify, Pandora and Deezer are investing heavily in podcasts.

But where’s the money?

Reports say ads from MailChimp, which Koenig reads at the beginning of every Serial episode, are costing the e-mail marketing company somewhere in the range of $25 to $40 per thousand impressions. Mind you, YouTube’s average is $17! In a popular podcast, an ad spot reportedly costs about $25 per 1,000 downloads or streams. Considering that ‘Serial’ clocked in about 20 million downloads or streams, this works out to be about $500,000.

That’s sound business!

Yes. No wonder then Serial’s producers have said it would be back for another season.

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