I woke up at 5:00 am this morning to listen to an audio livestream. It was a free talk session with the main characters from an audio drama that I’ve been listening to recently. The drama finished airing their last episode a few weeks ago. This livestream served as a wrap-up party for the crew as well as a spontaneous Q&A session with the fans. I didn’t want to miss out, so I set an alarm to make sure I tuned into the livestream on time. It was really funny, and I had a lot of fun listening to them chat about the drama and their performance. By the way if you are wondering why they had the livestream at 5:00 am, it was because of the time zone difference, between Asia and North America.

@Roberto Nickson / Pexels

Radio drama, radio theatre or audio drama has been around for a long period of time. It is purely acoustic with no visual aspects. It relies on the dialogue between the different characters, the sound effects and background music to build a soundscape for the audience. I think of it as to watch a movie with your ears. Audience can use their own imaginations and paint a picture in their mind. Everyone will have their own interpretation of the sounds they hear, and it is really fascinating.

@Andrea Piacquadio / Pexels

I fell in love with listening to Chinese audio dramas in the last few years, it has now become my favourite hobby. I have immersed myself into this intriguing audio world and started to produce some of my own content as well. I joined an audio drama group and started producing with the team as their audio editor and designer. I would get the scripts from the script writer and the audio files from each of the characters. My job will then be to add music and sound effects and build the soundscape for the story.

@Jean Balzan / Pexels

Twitch is a platform that launched just over a decade ago and is known for video game live streaming. In the audio world, Podbean is known as one of the top platforms for social audio, live streaming and podcast shows.

There is a rise for podcasting and online radio shows. Even though you might not be frequently tuning into traditional radio stations in your care, there are many other ways where you can find audio-only entertainment. In my case, I just download audio dramas onto my phone and listen to them whenever I have spare time.