The micro-drama industry enters the deep end of transformation: Can copyright integration and content support unlock new opportunities in the trillion-yuan market?

In just a few years, short-form dramas have advanced by leaps and bounds with their "short, straightforward, and fast" characteristics, becoming a focal point in the content industry in China and even globally.

According to the data from DataEye's "2025H1 Short-form Drama Industry Data Report", the market size of short-form dramas in China is expected to reach 63.43 billion yuan in 2025. As of June 2025, the number of short-form drama users nationwide has reached 696 million.

As short-form dramas have become a popular form of entertainment consumption among the general public, the transformation of the industry is accelerating: From actors to production, from scripts to content, the entire industrial chain is undergoing an upgrade from wild growth to high-quality development.

In this process, how can all aspects of the industry develop in a standardized manner, and how can practitioners cope with market uncertainties?

The Copyright Middle Platform Helps the Short-form Drama Industry Upgrade to High-quality

The initial wild growth of the short-form drama industry is essentially the industry's initial state under the frenzy of traffic, while the upgrade to high-quality is an inevitable trend driven by multiple factors.

On the one hand, the upgrade of users' aesthetic standards is the most direct driving force.

After the initial explosion of a large number of low-quality and homogeneous short dramas, users' aesthetic thresholds have risen sharply. Simply relying on past gimmicks and reversals is no longer enough to attract users. The rationality of the logic, the integrity of the plot, the quality of the production, and the ability to resonate emotionally have become the criteria for judging the quality of works and the key to retaining users.

On the other hand, technological innovation, policy supervision, and platform competition have further promoted the industry upgrade.

For example, the development of AI technology has not only helped the industry reduce costs and increase efficiency but also given producers more room for creativity. Governments at all levels and various platforms have launched incentive policies to support key short-form dramas and promote innovation, which has also accelerated the industry's upgrade to high-quality. For instance, the "Travel with Short-form Dramas" creation plan initiated by the National Radio and Television Administration has incubated a large number of high-quality short-form dramas.

The transformation of the short-form drama industry from wild growth to high-quality is not only an important sign of market maturity but also a systematic change involving multiple dimensions such as content creation concepts, business models, and industrial ecosystems.

Against this backdrop, the Short-form Drama Copyright Center of Douyin Group (hereinafter referred to as the Short-form Drama Copyright Center) was established. By unifying the upload and settlement of short-form drama content across the group's channels and integrating copyright resources from platforms such as Douyin and Hongguo, it realizes "one cooperation, multi-platform distribution".

DataEye's Short-form Drama Observation believes that the establishment of the Short-form Drama Copyright Center for the short-form drama industry, by strengthening copyright management and establishing a unified communication and cooperation port, is expected to help production companies reduce risks and achieve win-win cooperation, thereby improving the overall quality of short dramas.

For producers, the unified port can effectively reduce cooperation risks and improve communication efficiency. The unified standards can also serve as a screening mechanism to eliminate inferior content, thereby improving the overall quality of short dramas and achieving win-win cooperation with production companies.

Copyright Integration + Content Support

Since its establishment, the Short-form Drama Copyright Center has intensively launched a number of policies to support its partners.

Currently, a large number of incentive policies targeting different categories and themes have been introduced: there are incentive policies for high-quality comic dramas, the "All-Encompassing Short Drama Plan" targeting classical masterpieces/legendary figures, and upgrade incentive activities for serial dramas and key categories.

For example, under the incentive policy for high-quality comic dramas, for dramas rated A or above, the minimum incentive for a single drama is 200,000 - 300,000 yuan, and for S+ rated dramas, the incentive can reach 500,000 - 750,000 yuan. Under the "All-Encompassing Short Drama Plan", for finished dramas rated A or above, the incentive amount for a single drama is 500,000 yuan, and for S+ rated dramas, it can reach 2 million yuan, with no upper limit for specially evaluated works.

DataEye's Short-form Drama Observation believes that this diversified content incentive model is expected to achieve three results in the short, medium, and long term:

In the short term, with content incentives, a large number of high-quality works in multiple categories are expected to emerge quickly, enriching the content reserve and further consolidating the platform's leading position in the short-form drama track.

On the one hand, with real-money incentives, the Short-form Drama Copyright Center will quickly attract a large number of production companies to cooperate in a short period of time. The trial-and-error cost for producers will be significantly reduced, and the content quality is expected to improve. At the same time, due to the screening mechanism of the unified review standard, inferior works will be eliminated, and the platform will quickly enrich its high-quality content reserve in multiple categories.

On the other hand, the enrichment of multi-category content can also precisely match the different segmented needs of users. By improving the content richness, user retention will be increased, further consolidating the platform's traffic and content advantages in the short-form drama track and strengthening its leading position.

In the medium term, through incentive guidance, production companies can further explore more categories of content, improve content quality, and thereby enhance their own competitiveness.

Thanks to the Short-form Drama Copyright Center's incentives for diversified content, production companies, with the support of funds and resources, can also explore more content in different categories such as classical, intangible cultural heritage, and folk customs, breaking through the limitations of fixed themes. By producing high-quality works in segmented tracks, they can enhance their own competitiveness.

In the long term, it is expected to break the dilemma of content homogenization and guide the establishment of a "flourishing" content ecosystem.

As time goes by, the cooperation ecosystem established between the platform and producers can not only quickly produce a large number of high-quality works in traditional themes but also fill the market gaps in segmented categories (such as classical masterpieces and legendary figures), greatly improving the content richness.

At the same time, the support for serial dramas also demonstrates the Short-form Drama Copyright Center's long-term development of IP. For example, in the "Short Dramas for Chinese New Year" incentive activity, the platform gives an additional 10% incentive for the second season of eligible serial dramas, and the additional incentive ratio for the third season reaches 15%.

High-quality content in multiple categories + long-term development of IP is expected to gradually change the industry's short-term hit thinking, break the dilemma of content homogenization, and establish a long-term content ecosystem with multiple categories coexisting.

In addition, the Short-form Drama Copyright Center has also launched a special growth plan for film and television institutions, encouraging more practitioners to join the online short-form drama industry through various forms of support. DataEye's Short-form Drama Observation summarizes it into four types of support: funding support, content support, data support, and traffic support.

① Funding support: The maximum guaranteed incentive can reach 2 million yuan per drama. Some projects can be evaluated separately, sharing the capital investment risk, and can also be superimposed with other activity sharing coefficients.

② Content support: A large number of IPs from Fanqie Novels are open for adaptation rights, reducing the difficulty of script creation. At the same time, content evaluation and suggestions are provided for scripts and finished dramas, lowering the entry threshold.

③ Data support: The data of cooperative short dramas are interpreted and reviewed to guide content creation with data.

④ Traffic support: Douyin Group distributes through multiple channels, and for hit dramas, an additional promotion budget of 200,000 - 1.5 million yuan per drama can be added.

Can the Middle Platform Incentive Model Create a New Paradigm for the Content Ecosystem?

As mentioned earlier, the upgrade to high-quality in the short-form drama industry is not an upgrade of a single link but an upgrade of the entire industrial chain.

The establishment of the Short-form Drama Copyright Center and the subsequent launch of intensive incentive activity policies are expected to help the industry create a new paradigm for the content ecosystem.

At the content level, different incentive policies focus on different themes, ultimately achieving diversified category incentives. Through funding and resource support, a diversified and high-quality long-term content ecosystem is created. Some works have successfully integrated regional culture and intangible cultural heritage elements into the plot, achieving both cultural value and viewing experience.

At the industrial chain level, the special growth plan for film and television institutions supports them in four dimensions: funding, content, data, and traffic. This helps traditional film and television institutions lower the entry threshold, promoting the industry to become more large-scale and standardized, and building a healthy growth ecosystem.

At the industry level, the Short-form Drama Copyright Center has constructed a standardized system and a unified communication window through a unified and standardized authorization process, establishing full-link protection from content rights confirmation to traceability. This also lays the foundation for the full-industrial-chain development of IP. In particular, serial dramas will have stronger potential for lifecycle extension, enabling short dramas to have the same industrial value as long dramas.

Overall, this middle platform incentive model not only enhances its own market competitiveness in the short-form drama track but also helps cooperative institutions achieve win-win results and promotes industry development through a standardized system, creating a new paradigm for the content ecosystem in the industry.

In the long run, when the content quality continues to improve and the themes and categories become more diverse, short-form dramas will no longer be limited to the attribute of "traffic consumption". The industry can achieve stable growth in standardized development. Short-form dramas can not only become an important carrier for mass entertainment consumption but also undertake the mission of cultural dissemination, ultimately achieving a double improvement in industry value and social value.

This article is from the WeChat official account "DataEye" (ID: DataEye), written by DataEye and published by 36Kr with authorization.