TikTok introduces option for creators to put videos behind a paywall

Social media company ByteDance has introduced the Series feature for TikTok. This allows creators to create series of up to eighty videos and offer them to their followers and viewers for a fee.

Video makers can determine the price of their series themselves, says TikTok. Followers or viewers can find links to purchase a series on creators’ profile pages or as links in individual videos. The eighty videos have a maximum length of twenty minutes each, much longer than the usual videos on TikTok. The platform has become big with short videos of often ten or fifteen seconds.

The Series feature will be available gradually over the coming months to creators who sign up for it. It is unknown how the company will select which creators will and will not have access to the feature. The opportunity for all makers to create Series will probably follow at a later date. That the feature was coming was already apparent from a rumor a few weeks ago.

TikTok already has multiple ways for creators to make money, including splitting revenue from ads around videos from certain creators. The Chinese developer wants to turn TikTok into a platform where creators can make money. Despite the many viewers, the earnings of many creators on the platform are still relatively limited.

The platform has been under fire for some time because Chinese employees have access to users’ private data. In the US, TikTok is therefore busy storing data on Oracle servers under Oracle’s supervision. TikTok said last month that it will do the same in Europe, but it has not yet said which company it will partner with for that. TIkTok calls this initiative ‘Project Clover’.