Hi there! My name is Janko Roettgers, and this is Lowpass. This week: Hollywood’s microdrama obsession, and YouTube’s game-changing AI initiative.

Microdrama apps are embracing user-hostile design choices to make quick cash

What if you could make billions of dollars with cheaply produced content, all while sidestepping powerful distribution platforms like Netflix and YouTube? This promise is at the core of Hollywood’s latest obsession: microdramas, a new form of storytelling that originated in China, gained momentum in India, and is now taking the US by storm.

There have been countless stories in Hollywood trade magazines and business publications alike in recent months about apps like ReelShort, DramaBox, and ShortMax. These apps are supposedly poised to generate $1.3 billion in revenue in the US alone this year, with global revenues estimated to be around $8 billion.

This has led a number of Hollywood companies to jump on the bandwagon: Cineverse and Banyan Ventures have teamed up on a new service dubbed MicroCo, E! Entertainment Television founder Alan Mruvka is getting ready to launch the microdrama app Verza TV, and Fox has invested in Holywater, the startup behind the microdrama app My Drama.

There have also been a bunch of stories about the production of these mobile-first stories, with shoots being low-budget, non-unionized, and perhaps, at times, exploitative.

But very little attention has been paid to the audience of these shows. All those stories about massive growth and huge revenue estimates ignore what it’s like for consumers to actually use a microdrama app. So I decided to download ReelShort, the most popular microdrama app in the US, and take one for the team.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.