Through the popularity of TikTok, one of the video trends that is also on the rise is the micro-drama trend. These micro-dramas come with a duration of each episode of around one minute, and they are broken down into around a hundred episodes for a title. Each episode also ends with a method that depends on the storyline, making viewers want to continue watching to the next episodes.
Through TikTok, the trend of micro-dramas is increasing in 2023, and it is targeted at around 300 million global users watching micro-dramas. In line with this move, Bytedance has now also marketed their own micro-drama-focused application, called Melolo.
Currently, it gathers dramas from China, and is offered for free without any fees. Perhaps if Bytedance's experiment is successful, they will make high investments in the cross-market micro-drama content arena in various languages, including charging for it.
For your information, besides Melolo, there are several applications that are ready to market their offerings through TikTok, including the DramaBox and ReelShort applications. Both focus on offering micro-dramas with each episode lasting around a minute, leading to hundreds of episodes. In Malaysia, Astro is also experimenting with micro-dramas and publishing them through TikTok. According to some analysts, this micro-drama trend is expected to continue to increase in demand moving forward.