Pay-to-watch gains popularity in China

A man passes by Youku's billboard in Shanghai.[Provided to China Daily]

The 16-episode love drama between a United Nations peacekeeping troop captain and a volunteer doctor in a war-torn country is now airing on iQiyi at 9 pm every Wednesday and Thursday, the same time as South Korea's KBS.

IQiyi claims there have been more than 1.2 billion views of the series till March 25. Its VIP membership is ad-free and two episodes ahead of free users. It is priced at 19.8 yuan per month, 58 yuan per quarter and 198 yuan per year.

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported the number of iQiyi's paying users has risen by 50 percent to at least 15 million after the netcast began. This suggests the website's revenue may have received a boost of no less than 190million yuan.

This is not the first time a hot TV drama increases online revenues. Last year, the series Grave Robbers' Chronicles, based on a best-selling series of novels, triggered a paid viewing craze.

It was viewed 160 million times and attracted 2.6 million new VIP members within five minutes since it premiered on July 3. According to iQiyi, its server crashed, unable to cope with heavy online traffic.

Till last October, iQiyi had the largest 56.4 percent share of the market, followed by Youku Tudou and Tencent Video. iQiyi remains the market leader, according to a report by the China Netcasting Services Association and the China Internet Network Information Center.

The company will commit more than 50 percent of its investments this year to develop VIP memberships for online viewing. It expects the income from membership to surpass advertising revenue in future, Yang said.

iQiyi pulls in revenue also from netcasts of films, self-produced drama series, live concerts,music and documentaries.

Its digital library has more than 6,000 film titles, including domestic and overseas movies. In February, it formed a strategic cooperation agreement with international record company Universal Music. Its members could now watch top live concerts and MTV shows from the United States, Europe and other countries worldwide. They could also enjoy documentaries from BBC and Discovery Channel.

"The 10 million VIP members help us to understand the change in the pay-to-watch market. This also means China's online culture-and-entertainment consumer market is at a turning point, where games, music, education, online reading and many other fields could seek an opportunity for development," Yang said.