On 29 March 2022, Prof Edwin Yang (楊聰榮) from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) became speaker at Taiwan Studies Nusantara, BINUS University. With theme “How is learning language more fun through podcast?”, this seminar successfully attracts more than 400 Indonesian participants consist of students and linguistics practitioner.
As we podcast is a digital audio file made available on the internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically. In Indonesia itself, podcast is quite popular 2 years before the pandemic. In Indonesia, the presence of audio application for music, for example Spotify, has developed into sharing podcast of any topic of speech.
Prof Edwin Yang explain in detail about the history of podcast in Taiwan. According to Prof Edwin, on 2005-2006, people start to make vlog in Youtube. Around 2016, when he started to research about podcasts, there were really very few podcasts in Taiwanese Chinese. But if we see todays’ Taiwanese podcast in numbers, it has significant rise. Until today, Taiwan has several applications to serve the needs of podcast audio listeners.
The Revival and Rise of Taiwan Podcast
On 2018, Firststory, Taiwanese podcast app, was launched. The founder are 25 year old Taiwanese guys named Kirk, Stanley, and Marin. Now, Firststory became the most popular podcast hosting service in Asia, and it is used by major media companies and key influencers. Later, on 2019, another Taiwanese podcast applications was launched: SoundOn.
Now, the popularity of Firststory and SoundOn is among of the 6 top podcast app in the world, together with Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and ListenContent.
Podcast can be a fun, easy and effective tools for us to receive new knowledge and information. As fun as listening the radio, but now we can “save” and downloads the podcast we want.
Taiwan top Podcaster
We can listen to a podcast while we on physical exercise, or driving. We don’t have to watch the screen all the times. This easiness make podcast became as popular as the new type of radio. Anybody can become an podcaster, share their own knowledge, then became influencers on specific field. The listeners maybe internationally, so if you try to be podcaster, be ready for be famous one day!
Written by: TC/黄昏 （17/04/22）