Editor's Introduction: Can short dramas become a new export of profits for short video platforms or online text platforms? Compared with long videos, short drama content is relatively low in production costs, and its creative subjects are relatively flexible, but if short drama content really wants to attract more users, the key is to look at the quality of the content. In this article, the author interprets the current short drama content and the development direction of the short video platform, and looks at it together.
On July 25, there was news that Douyin was applying for a number of trademarks including "Egg Flower" and "Egg Flower Novel", just a month ago, Tech Planet reported that Douyin would test the novel function channel in the home page of the tablet, while brushing videos, while reading novels, there seems to be no time for Douyin to kill.
Short video crazy output novel is not a day or two, the most laughable thing is that those short but not explosive earthy short dramas, exaggerated acting skills with toe-toe dog blood plot let people in just a few minutes of imagination, unfinished. Click in, and then pop up various interfaces such as Seven Cats Novel, Tomato Novel, And Rice Reading Novel.
Before Douyin, byte's novel army was innumerable, in addition to the tomatoes of the fire, Jitter novels, frequently read novels, idle novels, long-term reading novels, Cuiguo novels, ice shell novels, new grass novels... Paid or not paid for a short period of time, but in the end it did not stir up too many waves.
Today, those top-notch online articles and dog blood short dramas are more and more inseparable, it is worth noting that the same as the byte product, 72% of the users of tomato novels are vibrato users, and only 10% of the vibrato users are tomato users, which also means that vibrato opens the novel function, in fact, they have other considerations.
First, the short drama rolls up, and the platform has to "send food"
The first episode of Rebirth revenge, the second episode of encountering the big guy, the third episode of the cave house flower candle, by the fourth episode the children can go to play soy sauce... When the online hot meme was moved to the short video, even if the plot caused all kinds of discomfort to the viewers, few of them slipped away. Frankly speaking, the opening of the novel section of Douyin is a two-way rush in content.
On the one hand, the popularity of the short drama does not flow to outsiders, under normal circumstances, the drama will drive the popularity to feed the original work, such as the recent Wu Lei's "Star Han Brilliant" hit, the original novel immediately rushed to the first place in the Jinjiang VIP gold list. On the other hand, short dramas have sprung up for a time in the past two years, and as of April this year, 322 short dramas are about to start broadcasting.
There are so many of them, the plot of the previous part is always the same as the next one, the princess is killed and reborn, the overlord is strong to save the United States, and the son-in-law turns over... Such cool point thunderstorm dramas almost crowded the entire short drama track. According to Sina.com, in the filing of micro-short dramas in some months of this year, urban themes accounted for 50% of the share. Homogenization not only makes the audience tired, but also makes the short drama film unshot.
In a word, how this field is stepping on the audience's thunder point, in the final analysis, it is still content first. Douyin suddenly launched a novel, in addition to retaining user time when the short video growth is weak, but also to send a new batch of content foundation for short drama production. In 2022, after a simple and rough emotional shock, the short drama is obviously rolled up in content.
In May, Mango TV launched a suspenseful love short drama "Don't Mess with the White Dove's Secret", behind which not only stood Mango TV and the Da Mang Plan, but also the five-yuan culture that had produced "White Night Pursuit"; Douyin's recently launched "Liu Yexi Dizhi Maze" integrates various elements such as Tiangandizhi, cyberpunk, metaverse, etc., and is praised by netizens as a movie texture; "Ren Xin", which is being prepared, is a medical theme that has been tried and failed many times in domestic dramas; Tencent's "Big Mama's World" Douban opened a score of 8.5 to crush a number of domestic dramas.
All in all, the future market trend of short dramas is the same as that of long dramas, and THE IP content and the quality of episodes are the basis. This means that the platform needs more IP resources, frankly speaking, although ByteDance has always been adhering to the principle of buying and buying with deep pockets, in fact, compared with Tencent and Reading, there is never a strong IP resource library behind Byte, after all, the former has adapted more than 160 online articles in a year.
In contrast, short video platforms and online text platforms, as of the end of 2020, there are only 22 short dramas on Kuaishou based on the original novels of the meter reading platform; Although there is no clear data on Douyin and Tomato, from the perspective of several exposed short dramas, neither "The Moment of Star Movement" nor "His Little Hot" has a real platform hit.
There is no doubt that compared with long dramas, the main body of short drama creation is more diverse and flexible, and it can resonate with traffic in a short period of time. However, because of this, the platform is more thirsty for IP resources. Not only vibrato, the short drama "big household" Kuaishou in order to create 1,000 Kuaishou exclusive boutique short dramas, not only cooperate with the network text, but also try to adapt comics, such as "Raising Enemies for Trouble" is adapted from the comic IP of Kuaishou.
Bytes have suffered from insufficient resources.
As early as the autumn of 2019, motie, Chinese online, and palm reading technology, as plaintiffs, jointly pointed the spearhead at Beijing Reading Unlimited Culture Media Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of ByteDance, and the reasons for the lawsuit were the same, infringing the right to disseminate information on the internet of works. Nowadays, "tomato scrambled egg flower", I don't know if I can satisfy my appetite in the future.
Second, short dramas have become a new export of online film and television?
The preference for short dramas on several video platforms has been blatant since last year, and in 2022, Himalaya also announced its entry into the field of short dramas, planning to develop 12 online text IP in 2022, and cooperate with Mango TV and Dasheng Media. More and more novels, comics, and games are beginning to flock from long dramas to short dramas.
Have short dramas taken over long dramas and become a new export of online film and television?
According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2018 to 2021, the number of TV dramas produced in the whole year was 323, 254, 202 and 194 respectively, and the number was reduced. At the same time, micro-short dramas have grown tremendously, with 266 micro-short dramas on record in March 2022, 322 in April, and 421 in May.
It is worth noting that these figures only include online micro-dramas that require platform review, and if you count individual productions, the number will only be more. If IP long dramas are filmed and television, it takes a long waiting cycle, and in the current precarious film and television market, more and more capital has long lost the courage to trial and error.
The short drama has a small investment and fast output, which has become the next flow of network IP and film and television resources for a time, whether it is for the author or the producer, the commercial value of the short drama cannot be underestimated. According to Kuaishou's data, as of October last year, the daily active users of short dramas on the Kuaishou platform reached 230 million, the total number of broadcasts reached 770 billion, and the total income of short drama creators has exceeded 1 billion.
According to the monthly accounting + reward war report data of Kuaishou short dramas, since June 2021, the average monthly sub-accounts + rewards of Kuaishou short dramas have reached 7.44 million yuan. Although there is no specific official data on Douyin, from the perspective of the platform's accounting rules, a single short drama can get up to 300% of the production cost of the account income.
In terms of drainage, the feeding effect of the short drama on the original work is no worse than that of the long drama, and after the classic short drama "Qin Ye's Little Dumb" became popular, the original reading data increased by 500%; The closing data of "Falling in Love with You Before Falling in Love" shows that the number of readers of the original novel of the show increased by more than 3,000% during the hit of the short series, and a small short drama of a few minutes has brought far more spread in the era of fragmented entertainment than the lengthy series.
The commercial returns of short dramas have also gradually become prominent, especially in contrast to long dramas. According to the "Q1 Drama Market Sponsorship Report" of Yien Data, the domestic dramas launched in Q1 in 2022 fell by 28.1% year-on-year, and the average number of cooperative brands of a single TV series also dropped from 31.6 to 23.7.
In contrast, the frequency of brand appearances has become more and more high-profile. For example, vivo implanted the short drama "Ground Branch Maze" starring Liu Yexi; Xiaopeng Automobile X Liu Yexi related topics played as high as 80 million +; Mars Wrigley implanted in the Night Shift Diary; DR's customized "Night Shift Diary" outside... The ability of short dramas to absorb brands is evident.
Long dramas are top streams, and although short dramas are not a dimension in terms of star-making, they can just cater to the cargo attributes of short videos. According to Kuaishou's "Magnetic Star Short Drama Talent Marketing Manual", 30% of the short drama talents have received video/live business orders in Juxing, and the short drama vertical explosive videos account for 30%-40% of the overall business list videos.
With a short drama actor "One Lu" who exploded in "This Male Protagonist Is A Little Cold", the live broadcast flow has increased by 60 times compared with before, and the highest turnover of a single scene with goods during the Spring Festival is nearly 3 million. In the future, the ip of the network text can not climb the big tree of film and television long dramas, and the short dramas can also be regarded as a good destination.
Third, after reconciliation with iQiyi, Douyin still has to rely on itself
Looking back at the layout of Douyin in the IP field over the years. The most exaggerated in 2020, Byte invested in five online literature companies in one go, including Wuli Culture, Xiuwen Technology, Dingtian Culture, TaYu Literature, and Jiuku Literature Network, although these online literature companies are not very famous, but their respective advantages are remarkable.
For example, Wuli Culture has 6 original literary websites, which have signed more than 4,000 authors and reserve more than 6,000 film and television copyright works; Dingtian Culture has three major online platforms: Sweet Yue Reading, Melon Novel Network and Domi Reading Network; The Grinding Iron Group behind Xiuwen Technology once hatched the head IP of "Young You".
Chasing dramas on Douyin is not a novelty, but in addition to the production of short dramas in the real sense, the secondary creation editing videos uploaded by a large number of netizens have also once supported the chasing outlet of short video platforms. Previously, long and short videos made a lot of noise because of the infringement, and even went to court several times.
According to the statistics of the "2020 China Online Short Video Copyright Monitoring Report", "on average, each exclusive original short video work was moved and infringed 5 times, and the infringement rate of exclusive original authors of short videos was as high as 92.9%". The turning point came in July 2022, when iQiyi and Douyin finally reached a settlement on the creation of secondary edits.
According to this cooperation, iQIYI will license its long video content to Douyin Group, including high-quality plays such as Mist Theater, which can be used for the secondary creation of Douyin, Watermelon Video, and Today's Headline Platform users. This is also no way to do things, the long drama is broken open and crushed on the short video platform, from an objective point of view, Aiyouteng is helpless.
According to the entertainment marketing white paper released by the huge engine, in the past 2021, the number of vibrato movies played exceeded 590 billion, the number of TV series played more than 150 billion times, and the number of variety shows played exceeded 83 billion, from December 2020 to December 2021, the growth rate of douyin movies was 72%, and the growth rate of TV series broadcasts was 115%.
However, after reconciliation with long videos, can the content creation of short videos be "worry-free"? It is worth noting that with the growing group of secondary creators, the situation of more monks and fewer porridges may not be able to cover up. From 2019 to 2021, the output of domestic dramas and online dramas in China will remain at about 600, but how many creators?
As of December 2021, there are more than 92,000 entertainment experts on the Douyin platform, and these creators are distributed in the three major genres of movies, TV series and variety shows, with a growth rate of more than 20%, especially the explosion of CREATORs in the TV drama field, which has published more than 22.5 million.
This is just a douyin family, plus Weibo, B station, Kuaishou... In fact, the short video power series will eventually fall into the original field, the content wind direction iteration is rapid, relying on people is not as good as relying on themselves, which may be the most straightforward truth.
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Dao always has a reason, WeChat public account: Dao always has a reason, everyone is a product manager columnist. Independent contributor, in-depth observer of the Internet and technology circles.
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