In another massive achievement for the leading audio series platform Pocket FM, it has recently announced its series “Saving Nora” has crossed 500 million plays, earning it over USD 18 million worldwide. As the platform’s second smash hit — following the platform’s flagship series “Insta Millionaire” — “Saving Nora” is paving the way to success for a gripping new entertainment option: the audio series. Insta Millionaire, apparently, is the first audio blockbuster to have surpassed USD 10 million and 1 billion plays.
Pocket FM is an audio entertainment hub specializing in the innovative storytelling format of narrative audio series. Since its launch in 2018, Pocket FM has pioneered the audio series in India and grown to a global scale, introducing international audiences to the wonders and joys of this incredible storytelling and innovative medium.
Gripping audio series like “Saving Nora”
“Saving Nora” is one of the most popular audio series on the Pocket FM platform that tells the story of a woman who accidentally gets pregnant. This causes her fiancée to dump her, her town to cast her out, and her family to shun her as the black sheep. However, when she returns successful and beautiful — to the envy of everyone in town — she has the unique opportunity to get back at everyone who has shamed and wronged her.
This gripping audio melodrama has clearly struck a chord with Pocket FM listeners. Beyond the impressive financial performance of the series, it boasts an excellent 8.6 user score on IMDb.
However, “Saving Nora” is just the tip of the iceberg in Pocket FM’s incredible and vast library of original exclusive content. Pocket FM offers audio series in a wide variety of genres, from romance to fantasy, suspense, horror, sci-fi, mythology, and more — virtually ensuring that every user will be able to find their next listening obsession. This has led to many of the platform’s other series, including (but not limited to) “Insta Millionaire,” “The Return,” and “God’s Eye,” to become veritable hits in the audio content sphere, with audio series – a category it has created and established.
Pocket FM touts that its content brings the concept of “blockbusters” to the audio medium, as the storytelling of its hit audio series is so gripping and engaging that it rivals any major motion picture or streaming series. Every one of Pocket FM’s series is created to immerse the listener in the world and story of the series, and no one in the audio content space has come close to the level of Pocket FM in this regard.
How binge-listening will change audio entertainment for good
Indeed, Pocket FM’s content library and platform lend themselves to a unique listener behavior, which it refers to as “binge-listening.” Much as Netflix and other streaming services kicked off a trend in visual entertainment of binge-watching, Pocket FM is poised to revolutionize the audio medium. With many of the platform’s most popular series having episodes numbering into the hundreds or even thousands, listeners can expect to get wrapped up in their new favorite audio series for hours on end.
Still, Pocket FM is designed with flexibility in mind. The shorter format of its episodes gives users a choice between listening to only a few episodes of their favorite audio series — if they’re commuting to work or trying to fill time during a break, for instance — or if they want to unwind for several hours with a binge.
Sometimes, however, a short listening session will even turn into a binge as listeners get hooked by the platform’s groundbreaking, cinematic audio series. According to the platform, the average daily listener engagement is 115 minutes globally while it’s 135 minutes in the U.S.
Revolutionizing entertainment with an innovative freemium model
With many entertainment services — including audio entertainment — users are expected to pay a monthly subscription fee to access all of a given platform’s content, even content they would not choose to consume.
Pocket FM broke the pattern, and introduced micropayments to lower the entry barrier. It offers users flexibility with its revolutionary freemium model, which allows listeners to pay for only the content they want to enjoy.
With Pocket FM, a number of episodes are made available daily for free, and users can continue their binge if they wish by purchasing access to additional episodes through microtransactions using in-app currency.
The success of “Saving Nora” on Pocket FM shows that there is immense demand for the new paradigm offered by this revolutionary entertainment hub. People want high-quality, immersive audio series that will grip them, and according to Pocket FM, this is only the beginning.
“A heartfelt congratulations to our exceptional team, and a massive thank you to our incredible listeners,” said Pocket FM CEO Rohan Nayak in an announcement about the series’s success. “We are just getting started. Looking forward to the audio series crossing 1000 crore [in] (indicating USD 100 million) revenue!”