TikTok Launches its First Subscription Comedy Series, Opens Up ‘Playlists' to More Users
TikTok’s trying out another new creator monetization process, this time through direct subscription for an upcoming comedy series in the app.
As per Hollywood Reporter, TikTok is launching a new, eight-part comedy series with creator Jericho Mencke, which users will be able to subscribe to for $4.99 for the season.
Though they won’t be short-form videos – each episode will be 30 minutes long, which could help to get more people consuming longer-form – and more easily monetizable – content in the app.
Which has become a key impediment for TikTok’s progress. While the app, and short-form video in itself, has become hugely popular, TikTok has faced various challenges in building an equitable monetization process, with many of its top stars reporting major issues with its Creator Fund, and huge variances between TikTok and what they can earn in other apps.
Case in point – this creator recently noted that over his six months in TikTok’s Creator program, he has earned only $622, despite generating millions of views in the app.
The creator’s videos (@cornydirtydan) generate around 30k views each, and he’s posted around 9 videos per week this year, with some of his clips reaching millions of views (his top-performing clip, as noted in the video, has eclipsed 50m views in the app).
At a basic comparison, not factoring the many variances and differences between TikTok posting and longer form content on YouTube, if this creator had committed the time to YouTube instead, and generated similar view counts, he would have earned around $60k via the YouTube Partner Program.
Again, this comparison is not direct, and it would require more time and effort to post longer form videos to YouTube instead. But the difference in earnings potential is massive, which poses the biggest risk to TikTok’s ongoing growth – because if creators can earn more in other apps, they’ll likely, eventually, abandon TikTok for greener pastures instead.
That’s why TikTok’s adding more monetization options, including subscriptions, Live Gifting, eCommerce integrations, facilitating branded content partnerships and more. Read More...
