Social Networking is continually on the rise and gradually becoming a staple in our every day lives. One brand we should be watching out for is Musical.ly, who are hoping to claim domination in 2018.
Dubbed as a ‘video social network app’, it was launched in 2014 by Shanghai founders Alex Lai and Luyu Yang. It wasn’t long before Musical.ly caught on in America, where the tweens enjoyed the fact that they could essentially film their own 15 second music video. Musical.ly now attracts 60 million monthly users.
Yesterday evening, CelebMix were invited to an event where we were given an introduction to the app, and got to hear from some of those who know it best.
Verena Papik, Head of Marketing of the app opened the event by giving us a low down on the history of Musical.ly. Something interesting she spoke about, was that it had just been bought by Chinese startup ByteDance for a deal reportedly up to 1 Billion. This would be a positive factor in that it would enable the app to “merge Asian markets and diversify the content”, and noted the app had easy integration for users to create.
Creativity seems to be the main selling point of the app, as demonstrated by renowned Musical.ly ‘creator’ @outhebox, who was a speaker at the event. Tom, who has almost 750,000 ‘fans’ on the site, said that the special thing about being a user, or ‘muser’ as they call it, was being allowed to unleash his creativity.
A popular feature on the app known as the ‘Hashtag Challenge’ allows musers to respond to a challenge, be it to make a short video to their favourite song or complete something crazy. This allows people to tap into their own ideas and as Tom says, ‘inspires’ people to think of clever responses and become social media stars in their own right.
Musical.ly has already worked with artists such as The Vamps and Liam Payne, who signed up to the app earlier this year after encouraging fans to send him videos of them lip syncing to ‘Strip That Down.’ Musical.ly has also created its own social media heroes, with Ariel Martin and Max & Harvey Mills being just a few names that have gone on to achieve success.
We like the simplicity of Musical.ly and the karaoke lovers in us are definitely going to enjoy miming along to a bit of Havana.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVAl7LtxvGE
Are you signed up to Musical.ly? Thoughts? Let us know on Twitter @CelebMix.