The app half of teens are using — that you’ve never even heard of
If you haven’t heard of musical.ly by now, chances are you don’t have a tween anywhere in your immediate vicinity.
The mobile app — launched in April 2014 by creator Alex Zhu and longtime friend Luyu Yang — has since amassed a loyal user base, boasting more than 120 million global users, including pop stars Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, Meghan Trainor and Jason Derulo.
“We are catching fire,” Alex Hofmann, president of musical.ly North America, told The Post. “Our app is being used by nearly one out of every two US teenagers, and we’re seeing high levels of engagement.”
Given that the age of users (dubbed “musers”) — who upload more than 11 million videos daily — is mostly from 13 to 20, it’s worth asking: What exactly makes this runaway hit app popular with Gen-Zers?
Ease of use
As opposed to the more complicated formulas behind Snapchat and Vine as the premier bite-sized video sharing apps in recent years, the idea behind musical.ly is to create 15 seconds of original content, song cover, or a line of comedy to grab the viewer’s attention. At least these are the posts that tend to go viral on the app.
Perhaps the most alluring part of the musical.ly app is its seemingly intuitive interface. Swiping through the home feed, it’s easy to become mesmerized by the original songs and covers performed by creative users barely old enough to drive.
Unlike YouTube, Vine or other music-based social platforms, musical.ly is extremely intuitive, which keeps users swiping away. There are built-in labels of the video’s song title and artist, easy-to-follow hashtags (#featureme #featurethis), and other useful info like number of views and likes.
And once you’re ready to create your own musical montage, it’s as simple as hitting play on your already-synced music library and singing along. From there, you can get as creative or lazy as you like, choosing from the online library’s pre-set video templates.
The potential for fame
According to the company, it’s apparent that users on the platform have created their own language with hand movements and slang — and in turn birthed an entire culture of their own within the musical.ly app.
Because the platform has implemented features with an egalitarian approach, all users — who skew 75 percent female — are sharing material with not only their friends, but also with millions of other users in the hopes of being “crowned,” the app’s version of getting verified.
One of the things that makes musical.ly unique is the section of the app that features users’ uploaded videos. There are close to 80 a day curated from the 11 million average daily uploads, which fosters a drive to create and submit inventive content — namely the ongoing “challenges” the platform encourages musers to participate in.
The company claims that this feature is what makes many of its young users really excited to get potentially spotlighted. At the end of the day, someone with five followers is just as likely to be featured as someone with a million fans.
But taking over the teen social media scene isn’t what musical.ly set out to do, according to Hofmann.
“It’s not about us dominating the current demographic,” he said. “It is about us giving as many people as possible a product that they can enjoy every day.” Hofmann also noted a significant stat, saying that 50 percent of US teens are on musical.ly at the moment.
“Our existing user base is inviting new friends every day to join musical.ly and live.ly,” he said. “The more friends they have on the app, the more valuable our app becomes to them.”
Breakout stars
As you’d expect from such a massive platform, it was inevitable that users will catapult a select number of musical.ly users to fame. The app’s top user is 15-year-old @BabyAriel (real name Ariel Martin), whose nearly 13 million followers helped launch her mainstream pop culture career — complete with a “Good Morning America” appearance in April.
The widely adored Martin told “GMA” that musical.ly is “a great app and it really helps me express my creativity.”
Given the young star’s positive, amusing lip-syncing posts, it’s easy to see why fellow musers try to replicate Martin’s overnight internet fame.
And this high profile isn’t limited to young people, of course. As evident by “Gangster Grandma’s” popularity on the app, musical.ly is proud of highlighting any and all musers its community helps popularize.
Mainstream partnerships
Granted, musical.ly is still a niche app among tweens and teens, but the rising startup isn’t letting its young demographic stop it from entering the crowded digital arena of power players.
This summer, musical.ly partnered with MTV to host voting for the 2016 VMAs’ Song of the Summer award. Users were encouraged to create original content using the songs in the category, with each piece of content counting as a vote.
Hofmann noted that the popularity of musical.ly soared even more in recent weeks with the VMA partnership, saying, “The five-day campaign generated nearly 1 million videos, 20 million likes and over 100 million views on musical.ly.”
Just this month, the Pittsburgh Steelers have become the first official sports franchise to join musical.ly, kicking off a campaign featuring players. The campaign invites fans to participate in the #TerribleTowelTwirl legend to the tune of Pittsburgh native Wiz Khalifa’s “Black and Yellow,” for a chance to be featured on the Steelers’ official account.
Expansion into the streaming space
Despite making their reputation on them, musical.ly isn’t stopping at lip-syncing montages. This summer, the company released a sister app called Live.ly, which hit the 2 million-download mark less than two weeks after its official launch in June.
With the help of musical.ly’s already hyped user base, live.ly quickly became a companion download for the community. The streaming app was released by musical.ly as a way to provide the community with a livestreaming platform to create in-real-time content. New users outside of musical.ly’s teen demographic have also flocked to live.ly.
The future of video sharing
The latest musical.ly rollouts are just the beginning for the company.
“We are constantly talking with various major players on how to partner up with them,” Hofmann told The Post. “We have new collaborations with artists, entertainers, sports teams, shows and brands just about every week.”
The company says it has exciting expansion plans in the works that it cannot yet reveal, but once they go live, they’re sure to keep the musers excited, as well as usher in a whole new demographic.