An audio series and audio drama app is an app for stories made for listening, told in hundreds or thousands of short episodes. It is also called an audio series app or an audio entertainment app. Romance, thriller, fantasy and horror are its most popular kinds of story. The first few episodes of each series are free. After that, the listener unlocks each new episode with coins, the app's own money.
How do the coins work? A listener buys a pack of coins with real money, by UPI or card. Each episode then costs a fixed number of coins. Coins of this kind are called virtual currency. In some apps, a listener who does not want to pay can unlock one more episode free each day, or by watching an ad. On the web, coins are bought through a payment gateway. Inside an Android or iPhone app, the purchase usually goes through the app store's own billing, which keeps a commission.
Consider a woman who runs a sari shop in Indore. She listens to a 900-episode Hindi romance on her phone in the quiet hours between customers. She buys a pack of 500 coins for ₹199 by UPI. Each episode costs 10 coins, so the pack unlocks 50 episodes, at about ₹4 an episode. She listens to about three episodes a day. So she spends about ₹360 a month on this one series.
The app has three main jobs besides payments. First, it must hold listeners. A recommendation system decides which series each listener sees first. It uses what similar listeners started and finished. The app also measures where listeners stop. If many of them stop at episode 12, the writers know that episode 12 is weak. Second, it must add new episodes every day. Listeners of a hit series expect new episodes daily, and if none arrive, many of them leave. That is why audio drama production is one of the app's largest costs. Third, it must play well on cheap phones and slow mobile networks. So it stores compressed audio files and lets listeners download episodes for offline listening.
The stories come from two places. Some are written by the app's own writers. Others are popular stories licensed from an online story writing platform. Some apps now use speech and voice AI to voice episodes, or to make a Tamil, Telugu or Bengali version of a hit series. One Indian app also makes series in English for listeners in America, where it has become one of the largest audio entertainment apps.
How is an audio series app different from an audiobook subscription? An audiobook is a finished book, read aloud, and the subscription gives you a whole library for one monthly fee. An audio series is written for listening, never really ends, and is paid for one episode at a time.