Ximalaya.com, an app with more than 160 million listeners, was removed from the App Store in June. (Photo : Tech in Asia)
Regardless of its rapidly growing subscriber base, China’s mainstream audio apps are experiencing pain because of vicious competition and homogeneity in programming.
A Chinese paper confirmed that some of these audio apps were recently removed from Apple’s App Store and other mainstream platforms because of vicious competition.
This is a far cry from the apps' performance in the recent years, as they have been doing well in China, offering an infinite amount of music to listeners.
On April 14, lizhi.fm and duotin.com were both removed from the App Store due to a complaint filed by ximalaya.com about a royalty dispute.
After more than two months, ximalaya.com followed the fate of the two websites, as it was also removed after a vicious online attack.
According to a report on the development of China's new audio media, traffic of audio apps accounted for 54 percent of total mobile traffic worldwide in 2013, and was expected to rise to 66 percent in 2017.
Because the audio-app market is still in a nascent stage, mobile audio apps are still considering profitable business models in spite of the huge subscriber base.
Last March, qingting.fm got the number one spot for the highest number of downloads at 167 million. Qingting was followed by kaolafm.com with 136 million and ximalaya.com with 122.9 million.
Lichi.fm and duoting.com both accused ximalaya.fm of orchestrating their removal from Apple's App Store. Macro Lai, founder of lichi.fm, even said that he had solid evidence of royalties infringement by ximalaya.com.
Aside from vicious competition, an even bigger problem facing audio apps is homogeneity of their programs, which all focus on music.
To solve homogeneity, some audio apps are planning to diversify their programs, such as inviting independent media to provide contents on their platforms and introducing gaming products.
