Are audio books the new thing?
The Weekend recently stumbled on the application “Shwe Nar Sin” (golden listening) which offers an array of audio material. It already has some 250,000 subscribers.
“The audience here thinks that narrating in a monotone is kind of boring since Myanmar people are used to radio drama which involves conversations among several characters,” said Win Htut Han, head of the business department of Bagan Innovation Technology which released the application. “We hope to publish books in various formats –physical, electronic and audio.”
Shwe Nar Sin has also developed Wun Zinn and the Bagan keyboard.
Their Shwe Nar Sin app currently offers a selection of hundreds of books, with 3 to 6 such chapters per book, lasting from 10 to 45 minutes. Since its release, the company has been publishing 50 new chapters for their books each week.
Most of the costumers come from Myanmar’s major cities, such as Yangon, Mandalay and Taunggyi. According to the founders, these are where the most avid readers live – possibly to do with their education and access to technology. Audio books offer a hands-free alternative for commuters stuck in traffic jams.
For first time users, some audio books can be accessed for free; other titles can be accessed for as little as K100 via MPT.
Regular customers can download ten books per day for a daily fee and can listen to the material offline. For now, this service is limited to MPT clients.
“Internet services offer discounts to compete with one another so I think it is the right time to bank on audio as a business model since it is channeled through those companies,” said Win Htut Han.
So far the feedback has been positive, with most of the comments focused affordability of the service as well as the quality of the narration.
In the digital era, some people have been uploading Shwe Nar Sin’s recordings online, thus bypassing the pay-per-access application. As it can take up to 3 months to publish a full audio-book, and copyright law in Myanmar is still in its early stages in Myanmar, YouTube remains a threat to the application. An e-book, on the other hand, can be released in a matter of days.
While some authors encourage this new mode of publication, others have been reluctant to sell their work due to the lax enforcement of copyright laws in Myanmar. Very rarely does an author approach the company to request an audio version of their writings.
Earlier this year the Myanmar parliament passed the much-awaited Copyright Law, following the passing of the three other intellectual property rights bills – for industrial design, patents and trademark. The copyright law is designed to protect unfair use of creative works, such as books, films, magazine and photographs, but enforcement remains difficult – particularly in the digital era, and particularly in Myanmar.
Another difficulty arises as there are only few professional narrators in the country. For now, Shwe Nar Sin relies on a few in-house narrators as well as a dozen of freelancers. Still, the number of narrators working for Bagan Innovative Technology has increased since its inception, and 7 out of the 10 narrators are women. Most are self-taught, and enjoy reading.
Motivation and management have been the application’s best selling genres, which attracts the 18 and 35 male readership, according to Win Htut Han. Novels, religious and children’s literature are also becoming increasingly popular.
In the future, the company hopes to release ethnic language books in audio formats. However, finding qualified ethnic language narrators has proven challenging once again.
“Anyway, I hope audio books will be trendier and my team works hard to conquer both urban and rural areas where radio drama is already popular”, Win Htut Han added.
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