Content creators do a quick sound check

In the creator economy, quality audio is now a priority and investing in professional mics signals a shift from casual to serious production

- Shephali Bhatt

In just two years, Nipun Jain has gone from no mic to spending ₹20,000 on one. The investment was for Arey Pata Hai, an infotainment channel she runs with her partner Mohit Mamoria, that has over 8.5 lakh YouTube subscribers and 2,19,000 on Instagram. When they started, her phone's built-in mic worked fine for their selfie-style videos. But as their frames widened and shoots moved outdoors, "we realised how badly the background sound interfered with our audio," says 28-year-old Jain from Gurugram. A ₹800 Boya mic was their first upgrade. Then came rentals for multi-speaker shoots. Now they have a DJI Mini setup for studio shoots as well as outdoors, which cost them ₹20,000.

"Initially, it was all about making content backed with research and visually great," Jain recalls. When this didn't work, they started reflecting and realised that when you're casually scrolling like a viewer, you value audio quality over video quality. "If you have to make your viewer press that volume button, that means you are asking them to do one more step before they watch your content. That is a funnel right there. The audio needs to be just enough for me to keep scrolling," she notes. Instead of complaining about audio issues, Jain says people ask them about their audio equipment in the comments section now.

If ring lights were the symbol of the creator economy's rise during the pandemic, microphones are the motif of its maturity. What was once a scrappy, phone-shot hustle is now evolving into a serious, production-first business. The growing use of professional mic equipment—especially on platforms like Instagram, where polished audio was rare not too long ago—marks the creator economy's shift from quick content to quality content.