For one or two minutes per episode, the boss first married and then loved, and the heroine was reborn and hung up, which attracted many netizens to fall and recharge for it. As a result, "Mini Program short dramas usher in spring" has become a hot topic recently, and the related statement of "the most profitable track in 2023" has also made eager entrants feel like chicken blood.
Yangtze Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Zhang Nan
The sadomasochistic sweet drama is unstoppable, and some people spend thousands of dollars
Recently, some little-known actors have become popular in the field of skits. Actor Xu Yizhen, born in 2000, graduated from the undergraduate class of acting at Zhejiang University of Media and Communication, and has already made a name for himself in the field of short dramas. Many people have watched the sweet short dramas she partnered with Sun Yue, "Becoming a Billionaire Gold After Rebirth", "Just Like a Cold Light Meets the Sun", "After Rebirth, I Was Spoiled by a Scumbag's Rival", "Oops! The queen mother came to work", "After the flash marriage, Mr. Fu's vest can't be hidden", "You are heaven and hell", the name is a variety of sweet pet series, but there are also gains from acting in embarrassing dramas, and some viewers said, "Look at the two of them, I am a local dog, I love to watch". Some netizens complained, "It cost a lot of money to watch her sweet drama." Recently, short dramas such as "Frozen Apocalypse" and "Wushuang" have also become popular, and some people even spend thousands of yuan on annual cards in multiple mini programs.
As of July 2023, the market size of Mini Program short dramas has increased by 7%, with a scale of more than 179 billion yuan, and it has such a large market volume in just two years. Mini Program short dramas refer to short dramas played on Mini Programs or social platforms, generally shot on vertical screens. Normally, the first few episodes of a mini program drama are free, and as the plot continues to advance, the subsequent episodes will be charged, and the fee for each episode ranges from a few cents to a few yuan, even if there is a recharge discount, it will take dozens to hundreds of yuan to watch a short drama. During the interview, some netizens told reporters that they couldn't help but spend money when they saw that they couldn't stop, and some relatively well-made short dramas were still worth spending money. Now there will also be some resource collections on the Internet that are being sold at low prices.
Why are mini program skits so popular? Many people will brush up on some online novels on short video platforms, such as the sweet pet love between the business tyrant and Cinderella, the gorgeous transformation of the contemporary desperate housewife, and the affectionate sadomasochism of the ancient pain, and the script content of many short dramas is adapted from online novels, which essentially turns the text content into a visual thing to present, and it can usher in a high-energy plot in a minute or two, and the mood is reversed. You've found that most of the time, the logic of the plot gives way to a simple and straightforward need for coolness.
Based on the audio-visual needs of Internet users, micro-short dramas have developed rapidly
In fact, the topic of skits has been discussed in recent years. With the advent of smartphones, the traditional way of viewing has been subverted. The reason why micro-short dramas can stand in the limelight is that the scale of Internet audio-visual users in China has reached more than 10 billion. In the fast-paced life, many people have become accustomed to using fragmented time to chase various short dramas on their mobile phones. As of December 2022, the number of short video users reached 12.10 billion, and the average daily usage time of short video exceeded 12.2 hours. According to the report, more than half of the one billion short video users have watched micro-short dramas and instant noodles within 5 minutes in the past six months, and more than half of them have watched users under the age of 3.
Detawen's "Micro Short Drama Market Report for the First Half of 2023" shows that a total of 2023 new micro-short dramas will be released in the first half of 481, exceeding the 2022 new ones in the whole year of 454, which shows the rapid development of micro-short dramas.
On the whole, the current monetization model of the micro-short drama market is relatively mature, and for Youai Tengmang, which has already entered the game, and various short video platforms, it has entered the stages of account sharing, advertising placement and live streaming. Since the beginning of this year, more than 20 short dramas have been accounted for more than 200 million.
Explosive "small and big"? "Coolness" cannot be without a bottom line
Under the needs of a huge audience, we cannot be blindly optimistic. A person from a film and television company told reporters that the myth of short dramas achieving financial freedom is no longer credible, and at present, only 3% to 5% of the producers in the mini program short drama market can make money, and blind entry may lose hundreds of thousands, or even millions of yuan. At the beginning, the short drama industry was considered to have a low entry threshold, and the shooting cost was much lower than that of long video shooting, which was once regarded as a content type of "small and big", and there was even a saying that "7 days to shoot, 8 days to over 10 million, and <> days of wealth freedom", but now with the entry of more professional teams and the improvement of people's aesthetic needs, it has become not so easy to create a hit. And behind the explosion, in addition to content control, there are also various factors such as traffic operation.
In addition, the general environment for the creation of short dramas has also bid farewell to barbaric growth and developed in the direction of standardization and quality. In June 2022, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television officially issued administrative licenses for online drama films, including online micro-short dramas, marking that vertical screen micro-short dramas have entered the stage of transformation and development from a stage of development of mixed good and bad, mud and sand. In December 6, in order to guide the standardized and orderly development of online micro-short dramas, the State Administration of Radio and Television issued a notice, pointing out that the current online micro-short dramas have the characteristics of low production costs, lightweight content, and focused communication, and the administrative departments of radio and television have been continuously promoting and strengthening the management of online micro-short dramas based on long video platforms and short video platform accounts, while the emerging "small program" micro-short dramas use technical means to break away from supervision, develop rapidly, gain momentum, are not standardized, and have many problems, forming a crowding out effect of "bad money drives out good money".
The pursuit of the so-called "coolness" cannot be without a bottom line. Not only is integrated management of micro-short drama service entities, including "Mini Program" online micro-short dramas, the start-up entity should obtain a license, and all micro-short dramas disseminated online, including "Mini Program" online micro-short dramas, must pass a review, obtain a distribution license, and file for the record. In addition, special rectification is carried out on "Mini Program" online micro-short dramas that focus on pornographic and vulgar, bloody violence, low style, aesthetic vulgarity, and other content, especially for key online audiovisual platforms where "Mini Program" access and distribution are self-examined and self-corrected, and reformed immediately. Therefore, under the prosperity of the market, short dramas also need to go through multiple checks, clarify the boundaries, and find the right direction of development.