Since the beginning of this year, the longest episode of a single episode is no more than 10 minutes, the shortest is less than 60 seconds, there are many cool points, the rhythm is fast, and the reversal of dense micro-short dramas has become popular, attracting many netizens to "fall" and recharge for it.
Following the continuous release of industry dividends, iQiyi, Tencent**, Mango TV and other long-term platforms have left the market, striving to get a piece of the pie.
On December 14, Mango TV signed a cooperation agreement with Douyin to release the "High-quality Short Drama Support Plan", and the two sides will take the joint development of short dramas as the incision, and then promote cooperation in second creation, brand marketing and other aspects.
Previously, Tencent selected well-known artists to shoot micro-short dramas, and its China Literature Group also began to issue a "script collection order".iQIYI, which entered the game late, also released a micro-short drama cooperation model last year.
With more and more competitors entering the game, the market cake is gradually divided, and how long can this "small but beautiful" track keep people on the top?
The micro-short drama became popular in the circle
The so-called micro-short drama, according to the definition of the State Administration of Radio and Television, usually refers to "online dramas with a single episode of less than 10 minutes".
Compared with the complete long drama, the short drama captures people's needs to fill the fragmented time, acts as an electronic mustard, and the plot development is ups and downs, providing dense cool points and strong emotions to meet the needs of users for "curiosity" and "coolness".
Since the beginning of this year, China's micro-short drama market has shown explosive growth. According to the "2023-2024 China Micro Short Drama Market Research Report" released by iiMedia Consulting, the size of China's online short drama market in 2023 will be 373900 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26765%。In the third quarter of 2023, the number of online short dramas in China reached 150, nearly double the total of the whole of 2022.
At a time when online dramas are becoming more and more prosperous, short dramas have also been frequently exposed. For example, a literary short drama called "Ex-Wife's Strategy, Mr. Fu Wants to Spoil Me" won more than 10 million at the box office in just 24 hours after it was launchedThe recharge of the popular short drama "Wushuang" exceeded 100 million yuan within 8 days of its launch;The cumulative number of high-quality short dramas "Twenty-Nine" has exceeded 2 billion, and it has continuously dominated the top 1 of the hottest short drama list on Douyin.
The short drama that used to sit on the cold bench in the film and television industry has become a sweet spot since the beginning of this year, and it has quietly become popular. From the perspective of user groups, short dramas are aimed at the sinking market, with low- and middle-income people accounting for more than 70%.
Not only that, but there are more and more users who are willing to "krypton gold" for the micro-short drama. Yang Aili, chief analyst of China Securities Construction Investment** Media, pointed out that the monthly recharge amount of users in the short drama industry increased from 40 million yuan in June this year to 60 million yuan in October, and the market size is expected to be 200-30 billion yuan in 2023, and it is expected to continue high growth next year.
The industry is "chaotic".
However, the opposite side of the fire is the low style, aesthetic vulgarity, bloody violence, and even the micro-short dramas that rub the edge of pornography are also mixed in, affecting the healthy development of the industry ecology and attracting the attention of the regulatory authorities.
It is reported that starting from late November 2022, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has organized and carried out special rectification work on online micro-short dramas such as "small programs" in a concentrated period of three months, and has achieved positive results. Today, industry supervision has entered the normalized governance.
According to the data, since March this year, more than 350,000 episodes of vulgar and harmful online micro-short dramas have been cleaned up (more than 10,000 minutes), 429 small programs and 2,988 accounts that disseminate vulgar and harmful online micro-short dramas have been disposed of in different levels, and a "blacklist" mechanism for online micro-short dramas has been established.
Not only that, under the guidance of industry supervision, major platforms have successively issued announcements to crack down on illegal and low-quality micro-short dramas.
The removal of 4 short dramas produced by Mimeng from the whole network is a landmark event. Among them, "Black Lotus Upper Position Manual" focuses on the high-cool route of "Revenge of the Concubine", and it sucked 20 million yuan to recharge within 24 hours of being launched, but it was removed from the platform 5 days later for "rendering extreme revenge and countering violence with violence".
On the contrary, high-quality short dramas such as "Escape from the British Museum", "Twenty-Nine", "Left and Right", and "Please Grandma" have sparked heated discussions among netizens and received high ratings on the Internet.
Obviously, only when the micro-short drama enters the standardized and smooth lane, can the short drama bid farewell to the "short-lived" ending and move towards a new life. In the future, high-quality will also become an inevitable trend in the development of micro-short dramas.
The market or welcome new changes?
Previously, because of the short production time and quick results, the micro-short drama market was crowded with gold diggers. Among them, there are many long-term platforms such as iQiyi, Youku, and Mango, as well as film and television companies such as Ningmeng Film and Television and Tangren Film and Television to enter the game to seize market share.
Nowadays, as the micro-short drama industry has entered a new stage of standardized development, the market competition has accelerated and the involution has intensified, how to stand out among many short drama manufacturers and become a leader in the industry cannot help but be a question worth pondering.
From the current point of view, going overseas for micro-short dramas and exploring the possibility of "short drama +" are new ways to try.
If you want to "lie down and win", you can't "roll" in the Red Sea market, and overseas is a new battlefield for demand increase. It is understood that in August 2022, Crazy Maple Studio (Maple Leaf Interactive), a subsidiary of Chinese**, launched the short drama platform Reelshort overseas, which gradually opened up the volume and ran through the business model for more than half a year.
Since the beginning of this year, domestic online text platforms have also intensively launched vertical short drama apps overseas, including DramaBox of Dianzhong Technology, GoodShort of Xinyue Times, Flex TV of Anyue Network, 99TV of Kyushu Platform, etc.
In addition, new models such as "short drama + game" have also aroused strong market attention. Previously, the domestic live-action love film and television game "Finished!".I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Girls" topped the best-selling list in Steam for several days. The success of the game has made more and more players in the short drama track start to think about the possibility of "short drama +".
Open source ** said that after the rapid development of the short drama industry in the past 2 years, the supply of content has increased significantly, and the normative governance work carried out by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television may accelerate the clearance of low-quality content. In addition, the combination of short dramas, interactive games, AI, and XR technologies may further enhance the personalization, immersion, and immersion of short, flat, and easy decompression content, meet user needs, and enrich the monetization model.
Author: Hong Xiaodou.