Two sides of audio app education: idea praised, but effectiveness questioned

Experts mixed, with some saying to appreciate an opera one must listen to it, not listen to someone's explanation of it

Benjamin Franklin once mused that "an investment in knowledge pays the best interest", and with the rise in popularity of online audio programs, it seems that China is entering a time when paying for knowledge is fast becoming a cultural norm.

With the relentless onslaught of information being delivered online or through smartphones, the hundreds of thousands of new books published every year and a daily diet of entertainment and news across social media, it seems that people need better ways to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Especially given our fragmented, fast-paced daily lives, in which most of our information consumption tends to happen on the go, such as the daily commute to work.

Tapping into this newfound demand, knowledge providers have seen a market for delivery of easily digestible information across a range of media. As a result, they are compiling the content of popular books and mining news outlets, or taking complex subjects like psychology or business management and combining the information with their understanding and analysis to create marketable text, audio and video products.

For example, rush-hour scholars can, for just 4.99 yuan (78 cents), get supposedly profound analysis of books such as Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, or Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, just by listening to programs that last from 20 minutes to an hour on an audio app called iget.

The trend started gathering pace in 2016 through online platforms Ximalaya, iget and Zhihu, which provide audio programs, e-books and even broadcast lectures live online.

A survey of 2,001 people, conducted by China Youth Daily in July 2016, revealed that more than 63 percent of those polled were willing to pay for curated information provided by these online services.

Market value soars

According to consulting company iResearch, the value of the pay-for-knowledge market in China was around 4.9 billion yuan in 2017, and is predicted to top 23.5 billion yuan by 2020.

However, questions remain over the depth and quality of the information that someone can extrapolate from a 20-minute audio file and whether it is an effective way of learning.

Zhang Wenjing, a researcher with Suning Institute of Finance, said in an article titled Paying for Knowledge, Or Anxiety that, besides other factors such as social development and people's payment habits, the growth of the market is a direct result of people's anxiety.

She makes a good case, especially since Luo Zhenyu, iget's founder, proclaimed in 2016, when the pay for knowledge market was in its infancy, "I understand your anxiety for knowledge".

"What we're doing is giving those things that were once extremely expensive to everyone at a very low price, and with few barriers to entry," he is reported to have told the Fourth Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, in December.

According to industry reports, targeted users are middle class, aged 20 to 49 years old and mainly come from first-and second-tier cities.

However, according to Zhang, although these people are classified as middle class, many don't identify with the categorization because of the huge gap between their incomes, high housing prices and climbing living costs. This, Zhang noted, is what makes them anxious.

As China's economy has grown in the past 38 years, so, too, have the spending habits of urban residents. In tandem with the rapid uptick in economic fortunes of the country, people have gradually increased spending on things like education, entertainment, travel and culture.

When viewed through such a prism, it becomes easier to see how paying for knowledge has been able to ride the wave of changing attitudes in social consumption, Zhang wrote. Even more so with the proliferation of mobile devices and the convenience and immediacy afforded to younger users for whom paying for internet products and services is the norm.

Zhang contends that from rocketing housing prices and uncertain job prospects stems an anxiety to voraciously consume as much information as possible, some of which could be the knowledge that will provide the means to secure that coveted job or a better income.

"Modern Chinese society is changing so quickly that the knowledge acquired from textbooks becomes outdated very quickly," she noted, "especially in fields such as online development and artificial intelligence".

Questions arise

However, there are those who question the effectiveness of such methods of study, especially given their fragmented nature and the limited time frames involved.

In a bid to attract more users, some popular audio programs in an increasingly crowded market have devolved into little more than anecdote-filled podcasts. Such programs are entertaining, but rarely beneficial, said Li Ruyi, an online audio program producer.

He said it is because "online knowledge providers tend to avoid their moral responsibilities as educators." For years, he has been producing various audio programs online about topics as diverse as Chinese history, Japan and tea.

"Programs online actually provide a channel for education. If people are not satisfied with their current school curriculum, the internet actually gives people a chance to embark on an education more in line with their own ideas," he said, adding that "we should pay more attention to our responsibilities as educators".

Chiao Yuan-pu, a writer and music critic from Taiwan, agreed, suggesting that such programs give people the impression that if they listen to the anecdotes and stories, then they will have an understanding of an operatic composition or a knowledge system in just several minutes.

"You think that, once you pay the money and buy the program, you get the knowledge that you need, which is not always the case," he said. "So, as a producer, you should be more aware of what you are offering and, as a customer, of what you are buying."

Diverse offerings

On one such Chinese online audio platform, Douban, for just 128 yuan users can listen to 108 lectures about Records of the Grand Historian written by Sima Qian during the Han Dynasty (202 BC-263) given by writer and literary critic, Yang Zhao, from Taiwan.

"I hope my lectures of more than 2,000 minutes will stimulate listeners to read the original work. If you only listen to me, what you get is just my understanding of it, which is based on my own experience. It's a waste of time," Yang said.

"What you get is nothing but information that you may forget very quickly. Only if you read the original work, build up a personal connection with the information in the work based on your own experience, understand it, only then will the information become a kind of private knowledge for you."

Like Yang, Chiao said that while they can complement the original material, he also believes audio programs cannot replace it, noting that a 10-minute program can give you some perspective to, for example, understand an opera, but the audience still needs to listen to the original work to get the point.

"It's just like in another country, an advertisement might claim that, with the help of a certain program, customers can master the Chinese language in one hour," he said. "How can that be possible? We all know how complicated and profound the language is."