Ron is Founder & CEO at Podcast Network Asia — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
This interview was recorded at Podcast Day Asia, part of Radiodays Asia in Jakarta
Ron Baetiong: Podcast Network Asia is the biggest podcast network in the Philippines.
James Cridland: Today you were talking about Serye FM. Explain that?
RB: Yes. It’s our premium audio drama podcast platform.
We translate the best novels on Wattpad, turn them into audio dramas - not in an audiobook style, it’s fully animated with AI with the style people love in the Philippines, and then we put a paywall in place. The first seven episodes are free.
We learnt that there was a way to monetize and put a paywall within Spotify, that most don’t even know, about - through Spotify Open Access. We use that functionality, but it also allows us to localize the payment platform.
On the eighth episode, that person sees the lock sign within Spotify and then they pay: and they can pay using e-wallets because people in Asia do not have credit cards.
JC: That’s the clever thing from my point of view. So you’re using Spotify as a store-front, and then it’s your website that people pay through, so therefore you can accept not just credit cards, but also apps that are wisely used in Asia, like GCash as one example.
RB: There’s a lot of other wallets that people use, too, so we can definitely hyperlocalize within Southeast Asia because, again, only a single digit of the population - and we’re talking 400 million people who live here - only a single digits have a credit card.
JC: And the shows that you’re producing are using quite a lot of AI, I gather?
RB: Yes. So half of the cast are AI. The main characters in the story are human, because, even though AI can say it, it just lacks the kick and the emotion that people love when they listen to audio drama.
JC: Have you had a good conference here so far?
RB: It’s been great, as usual. Radio Days Asia is a top podcasting conference in the region. I’m just happy to show that the whole industry has evolved and I was just so happy to show our inspiration, which is (Indian platform) Pocket FM: we took a page out of their book and were able to hyper-localize this.
What shook the audience is that the one thing that people obviously pay for in this, at least in our side of the region in the Philippines, is BL and GL - that stands for Boy Love and Girl Love. That content makes top sellers. We’ve made a couple dozen thousand dollars because of that content alone.
JC: Ron, it’s always good to see you.
RB: Thank you, James.