Following Twitter’s launch of the paid subscription offering Super Follows last September, news emerged last week that Meta will be trialling subscriptions on the Instagram platform.
The trial consists of a small group of 10 Instagram creators in the US testing a new feature which will allow them to monetise content by making some of their Stories and Lives exclusive to followers who pay a monthly fee. Paid subscribers will be marked with a special badge, differentiating them from users not paying for exclusive content in the comment sections.

During this initial test phase, Instagram Subscriptions will be an extension of Meta’s Facebook Subscriptions business model, which launched in 2020. Meta said it will not collect any fees from Facebook Subscription purchases until 2023 at the earliest, and the same will apply to Instagram. Creators can choose their own price point for access to their exclusive content.

TikTok has also confirmed that the company are testing support for paid subscriptions. The feature is part of a limited test and is not yet broadly available. TikTok has declined to share further details on the feature. TikTok’s test of paid subscriptions follows recent confirmation that the company is testing an in-app tipping feature, which allows for creators to accept money from fans outside of TikTok LIVE streams (where tipping is already supported).

A recent blog post by Apple offered some insight as to how successful these types of subscriptions have been so far – the blog revealed that in the six months following the launch of Apple Podcasts Subscriptions, one in five subscriptions have had an adoption rate of more than 10%.

Our qualified guess is that few of you missed the aftermath of Netflix’s Q4 report last week, where subscriber growth outlook for Q1 2022 (management expects global streaming paid net adds of 2.5 million, vastly lower than the pre-report market consensus of 6.93 million) caused its stock price to fall -22% in after-hours trading.

In case you missed it, a quick update:

• Revenue of USD 7.71 billion (+16% YOY) – in line with Netflix’s own guidance
• Global streaming paid net adds of 8.28 million – in line with market expectations of 8.2 million but below company’s own guidance of 8.5 million
• Paid memberships amounted to a total of 221.8 million (+8.9% YOY)

With this, the Q4 earnings report season has officially commenced. The following weeks, we look forward to sharing the most important updates of these reports:

Her er er de nye strømmevinnerne – Kampanje 

HBO enjoys major growth in the Nordics and adds over 635,000 subscribing households following Max launch – Cineuropa 

HBO adds +635 000 subscribing households following Max launch – Helsinki Times 

HBO Max bounceback adds 635,000 Nordic subs – Broadband TV News 

HBO Max attracts 635,000 subscribers in Nordic region since launch – Telecompaper 

HBO bounces back in Nordics with Max launch – Digital TV Europe 

Nya siffror från Mediavision: Så många prenumeranter har HBO Max – Dagens Media