Creator subscription platform Patreon is making it a bit easier for fans to support their favorite creators this holiday season. The creator membership platform announced on Wednesday that it will roll out gift subscriptions, as well as functionality for creators to offer discounts for membership sign-ups.
The gift subscription feature had previously been in testing for select creators, but will now roll out for all creators.
According to Patreon, creators have historically seen the most significant increase in paid membership signups during the holiday season, between November and January. The gifting feature could make that bump more substantial since people will be able to give Patreon subscriptions as holiday gifts — for many memberships, this means unlocking exclusive access to bonus content, like extra podcast episodes, livestreams, or digital downloads. A creator who posts cooking videos might share additional recipes behind the paywall, for example. Creators who don’t want to give away content for free can instead opt to temporarily discount their subscription cost for new fans.
Patreon rolled out free memberships last year, allowing users to subscribe to a creator’s non-paywalled updates as though they’re an email newsletter. Over the summer, Patreon said that there have been 30 million new free memberships. Creators will be able to make gift links, redeemable by fans who aren’t currently paid members; if fans want to stay in the membership once the free period expires, then this feature could help convert them to paying members.
Among streamers, there’s already a culture of contributing gift subscriptions to fellow fans — this feature is similar in nature to existing tools for streamers on Twitch and YouTube, where generous fans will randomly award “gift subs” to fellow viewers. Patreon gift subs, by nature, probably won’t see the same spontaneity as a Twitch creator’s livestream, but they could equate to something like sending your niece an Amazon gift card. That’s not too far-fetched an idea, considering how popular creators are among young people.