As corporations, brands and creators hop on the trend, could we see short-form audio content in ways we’ve never seen before?
As content consumers, we value efficiency and speed. The media we consume is becoming shorter and shorter, allowing us to take in content experiences faster and engage with them while doing other things, that’s what makes short-form audio such a great experience.
With video content, you have to stop and really focus on it in order to get the full experience. With long-form audio, like podcasts, you have to tune in long enough to hear the full story. The average length of a podcast episode is around 40 minutes, and half of US adults who have never listened to one say that “podcasts are too long,” according to a 2018 survey by Edison Research.
It isn’t hard to understand why the short and fast paced content trend is booming. Most of us have probably spent a year or more in total on Youtube or scrolling endlessly on social media platforms. Podcast episodes hitting close to one hour is an investment with pre-set conditions, when 30% of that hour is filled with sponsorships and ads. And three hour movies should be a crime; robbing of our time.
People are very aware of the value of their time and where they spend it, and it’s what causes us to evolve and make improved choices. If data is the digital currency of the future, so is our time. But rather than just reflecting over our time, what if we treated our minutes as dollars and as a result, started budgeting our time for content consumption.
The rapid short-form of content brought a whole new dimension to all kinds of content creators and consumers; The ability to be anything, anywhere and anyone in a glimpse of time, short enough for people being able to question it.
It continues to feel fun and fresh. Most of all, it’s addictive. “Just one more”. The benefits of this is not just capitalistic, but also in high regard for creativity. Old and young users of TikTok, Instagram Reels and Byte are every minute of the day coming up with new ideas for rapid content that will captivate its audiences once more. How, might one ask. Hasn’t everything been done already?
The answer is impulsiveness. Content is everything and everything can become content. Highly produced videos with expensive lighting, scripts and retakes are not required anymore. What matters is what happens in the moment, the first take is always the best one.
And looking back in time; short stories have for long been a widely appreciated form of media. Perhaps not because of the story itself, but because it isn’t long enough to start dwelling on the plot or losing interest. It’s the perfect amount to cause a glitch in time, create a scene, trigger a reaction and then close it again.
The same trend is affecting real stories, too. News outlets have caught on by uploading shorter, more condensed videos to Youtube and daily five-minute podcasts to Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This is becoming the new normal. Why spend hours watching political debates, when you can catch the highlights the morning after?
The trend towards short-form audio isn’t going away. Are you ready?
Written by Christine Salomonsson
