TikTok is taking a page from Twitch’s book with a new feature that allows people to subscribe to the content creators who produce videos they’re fond of. Doing so grants subscribers exclusive perks such as custom emotes specific to that content creator, badges that signify a subscription is held, and more. The feature has started rolling out already in TikTok for users to play around with, but it seems that subscriptions are not widely available for everybody at this time.
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Users can already follow people on TikTok to keep up with their videos, but this new feature is directly tied to the platform’s Live function. Through these Live Subscriptions, creators get a new source of monetization while their fans get some perks and a more direct way to show support.
“Today we’re introducing LIVE Subscription, a monthly subscription on TikTok for people to show their appreciation for their favorite LIVE creators,” TikTok said this week in a post on its site. “LIVE Subscription will initially be available to invite-only creators this month and will then become available globally over the coming months.”
Over on the app itself, a landing page for the new TikTok feature has been set up to describe its various benefits. The subscription-only perks include custom emotes, subscriber badges to “stand out from the crowd,” subscriber-only chat where only those who’ve subscribed will be able to speak with the content creators, and unique gifts that only subscribers can send.
As the announcement said, this feature is currently in the invite-only stage and will presumably stay that way for the rest of the month. If you look for #livesubs on TikTok, you’ll see users who are already advertising that they’ve got subs enabled for those who want to subscribe. To do so, all you have to do is wait for someone to go live and follow them at which point you should see an option to subscribe to their channel.
A quick look at that feature in the app shows that even if someone has subscriptions “enabled,” their “subscribe” button could be greyed out with a message saying that subscriptions aren’t yet available for that person, so you may not be able to subscribe to your favorite content creator just yet.
TikTok isn’t the first to offer a creator-specific subscription option, and neither is Twitch, but TikTok’s version of this feature bears the most likeness to the one available on Twitch. TikTok did not discuss pricing options for subs in its announcement.
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