Micro-dramas are the big new thing in streaming content. These short, mobile-first videos are built for the attention economy and are already raking in vast amounts of money. If you haven’t heard about them yet, rest assured, you will soon. Here’s the lowdown on what you need to know.
What Are Micro-Dramas?
Micro-dramas are vertically-filmed video serials with titles likeThe Return of My Mafia HusbandandNever Reject a Wolf Princessthat you’re able to watch on YouTube or TikTok or through dedicated apps like ReelShort.
Put together, each title makes up a feature-length story, but they’re split into 50 or more episodes of around a minute or two, each one ending with a cliffhanger. The first few episodes in any story are free to watch, then you have to pay to continue. There are many payment options available, but an unlimited yearly subscription can cost you up to $200 or more.
The format emerged in China during the Covid period, where it quickly became a multi-billion dollar business. It’s now moving westwards, with the most popular micro-drama apps already racking up tens of millions of users and generating over $100 million a month, according toVariety.
In their current form, micro-dramas have similar production values to daytime soaps, with the same level of writing and acting. The audience skews 70% female, and melodramas and TikTok’s favorite “romantasy” genre dominate. Some stories even play out likeinteractive video games.
A Mobile-First Approach
Micro-dramas take a mobile-first approach. They’re shot vertically, with subtitles, and you scroll up and down to see more episodes. The bite-sized episodes are designed to capture your attention whenever you’ve got a few minutes to kill.
The stories cut to the chase pretty quickly, and are boiled down to their plot points a bit like reading a movie summary on Wikipedia. Rather than waste time introducing characters, captions appear on screen to tell you who they are, and everyone spells out very clearly what’s going on.
The episodes auto-play, and you can easily wind up watching more of them than you intended. If the stream of shocking reveals, slaps, and betrayals is your kind of thing, it isn’t hard to see how you might be drawn into spending money to see more, just as you mightpay for micro-transactions in games.
It’s not for me, though it’s fair to assume that if there’s more money to be made, then the kinds of stories will broaden to appeal to as many people as possible. It’s also reasonable to expect the quality to improve over time.
Yet the idea that it becomes a serious format is the best-case scenario. A cynic might suggest that a series of minute-long videos where no one really cares about quality is ripe for becomingdominated by AI slop. Maybe we’re already in the golden age for micro-dramas!
How to Watch Micro-Dramas Today
If you’re ready to dip into the world of micro-dramas, a good starting point is theReelShort YouTube channelorNetShort on TikTok. Most of the big apps have channels on social media. In some cases, they’ve uploaded full stories for you to enjoy, but a lot of the time you get a four or five-minute taster and have to switch to their app to see the rest.
You need the dedicated apps for the best experience. There are loads of them available for both iOS and Android, and they share essentially the same design and layout and work in the same way. The main difference is in the content, with some providers offering original series.
The apps typically offer weekly, monthly, or yearly plans, and you can buy tokens to unlock individual episodes or series in a pay-as-you-go approach. You can also earn free tokens through things like logging in regularly, watching more content, watching ads, or enabling notifications.
It’s not exactly cheap. In-app purchases start at 49 cents on some apps and can go as high as $299.99 for a year.
The Top Apps
Given the similarities of the apps, you can get started by just picking one and seeing how it goes.
DramaBoxis one of the most popular services, having amassed more than 100 million downloads on Android and ranking high in the App Store charts. The app makes it easy to find the most popular dramas.
ReelShorthas a huge amount of content, including movies and TV series, spread across multiple categories. It’s got a handy Trending section to show you what’s hot.
FlickReelsis a little more affordable than some of the other micro-drama services, so it might be a good place to start if you’re open to paying.
The Next Big Thing?
Micro-dramas are already big business, but the jury’s out on exactly where they go next. Is it a short-term trend that catches the attention of people with time to kill but disappears as quickly as it arrived? Or are they here to stay? Either way, they’re a glimpse into where streaming is heading: shorter, faster, and ever more addictive.
