A Gojek-backed firm’s rise as Spotify’s rival

The nascent Asian podcasting industry is booming, with Chinese and Indian audio-content companies logging millions of monthly active users. Meanwhile, Jakarta-based Noice intends to lead the way in Indonesia’s market despite the many challenges it faces there.

Freshly appointed CEO Rado Ardian and chief business officer Niken Sasmaya spoke to Tech in Asia about the audio platform’s growth story in a largely untapped local market.

Noice chief business officer Niken Sasmaya (left) and Noice CEO Rado Ardian / Photo credit: Noice

With over 2 million registered users, Noice has seen a 4x growth in users since 2021, ranking as the 10th most popular app on both the Play Store and App Store in Indonesia. In April, the audio platform also raised US$22 million in series A funding round led by Northstar, with participation from Alpha JWC Ventures, Kinesys, and Go Ventures, the VC arm of Gojek. Noice plans to grow its user base by 5x to 10 million users this year.

Its platform offers podcasts, audiobooks, livestreaming, and a podcast-uploading site. International audio goliath Spotify, Noice’s indirect, non-local competitor, also has all these features, though it does not offer in-built livestreaming.

Spotify is still the global and local leader, with 422 million monthly active users, a large reserve of funds, and ambitious international plans. Many have tried and failed to grow alongside the audio-streaming giant, including Vietnam’s Waves and social media sites like Facebook. Indonesia’s Kaskus, which ran a podcast service for four years, shut down last year and uploaded its original content onto Spotify. But can Noice succeed where others haven’t?

Spotify cranks up the volume in Indonesia

Noice’s biggest advantage over giants like Spotify is its hyperlocal focus. Backed by a radio company Mahaka Radio Integra that has a deep understanding of what its listeners want, Noice is creating podcasts in local dialects, incorporating folklore, and banking on region-specific experiences to capture the fragmented sub-categories of listeners.

“Only Noice has a good local grip. That’s why it grew dramatically”, says Adriano Qalbi, the chief creative officer at comedian agency Majelis Lucu Indonesia. Other platforms are “too skewed and too exclusive,” he adds.

Qalbi’s firm develops original IPs to give its comedians a platform. One example is Musuh Masyarakat, which was one of the first podcasts to be published exclusively on Noice. Currently in its fifth season, this podcast has been streamed 3.5 million times and counts 248,000 subscribers.

But Noice’s local advantage could be short-lived as Spotify’s local teams have already made inroads into the country’s audio-streaming market, creating exclusive Indonesian podcasts that 20% of its subscribers listen to. In 2020, Spotify recorded a 10x growth in the number of its Indonesian podcast listeners, with numbers continuing to climb.

In the same year, the company also made eight of its top-streamed Indonesian podcast shows exclusive to its platform. Currently, Spotify has 25 original and 13 exclusive shows in the country.

The giant also has the money to nab popular creators as well. Do You See What I See, a popular Indonesian horror podcast, was available on Noice – before Spotify bought its exclusive rights.

“Anytime a new podcaster gets traction, Spotify just takes them. It makes them exclusive, and they’re going to keep doing that to Noice,” an industry insider tells Tech in Asia.

On the competition from Spotify, Noice’s freshly appointed CBO Niken Sasmaya tells Tech in Asia, “It is very typical that some contents might come and go to test the listeners or users compatibility in different platforms. We also keep maintaining a good relationship with our creators even though they’re no longer exclusive with us.”

Tuning into the right audience