While adults may not be in the loop just yet, musical.ly is a hugely popular app that, according to Business Insider, has grown drastically thanks to teen usage. The continuous rapid development has turned musical.ly into a social media phenomenon and a secret weapon for the music industry.
A mixture of social platforms; musical.ly provides short-form video length similar to Vine, lip syncing capability comparable to Dubsmash, filters like Snapchat and Instagram and the ability to edit video speed within the app. The tool lets teens be creative with all their favorite features rolled into one!
The beauty of marketing with musical.ly is that you can get fans to promote your music for you. Fans pick a song and make a mini music video to share with their friends and followers. Not only can users create content with your music, you can also interact with them by following, commenting and hearting their videos. However, the best way to capture their attention is to make videos of your own.
To top it off, musical.ly pulls from Apple Music’s API so it is easy for fans to discover your profile and directly boost streaming numbers through the service.
Proof It Works
Let’s start with the cold hard facts proving musical.ly really is one of the most powerful and engaging platforms for youth, today — Because let’s be real, the numbers don’t lie.
- The ‘pick music’ page sees over 2 million impressions daily
- Average daily video views: 1 billion
- Average daily video creations: 7.4 million
- Average daily likes: 249 million
- Average active user watches over 60 videos a day
How It Works
Now that you know the impact musical.ly can have, let’s go over how to use it.
First, download the app and create an account by writing a short bio and uploading a profile photo. Fans can then subscribe to your page and receive notifications when you post a new video.
Next, to start creating videos press the + sign at the bottom of the screen:
To pick the music you want to feature, you will be brought to a page where you can search for a song or explore songs in different categories:
Next, click on the scissors on the side of the screen and you will be able to choose the part
of the song you would like to use:
Finally, it is time to record your video! Choose between video options: epic, slow, normal, fast or lapse and any lenses you would like to use. You can always change it up while recording by lifting your finger from the record button, swapping the settings and continuing with any of the different options. Preview your finished product, write a description, choose a cover photo and post.
Be sure to cross promote on your other socials telling fans to follow your page to start building a following!
Ideas To Get Started
musical.ly has begun to shift focus from lip-syncing towards diverse content still rooted in music. To give you an idea of what works best on the platform here are a few ways to get started:
- Don’t have a music video out yet for one of your tracks? Create a vertically shot mobile music video!
- Showcase the daily life of an artist. Use the time-lapse feature to show the artist eating breakfast, getting in a tour bus, going to soundcheck, playing a show, celebrating the end of a show and anything in between! Video similar to this often help boost engagement as fans love a glimpse into the lives of their favorite artists.
- Does your artist dance or have any dancer friends? Create a dance video to one of your tracks and encourage fans to do the same. Create a hashtag and tell fans you want to see their dance moves to your chosen track. You can even take it further and offer a prize to your favorite fan made video.
- If there is a hobby your artist can showcase, musical.ly is a great place to share. Create cooking, workout, craft or comedy videos! You can make this a recurring trend on your page similar to a vlog. The app can highlight another side of an artist for fans to learn and relate to.
- Take the fans through the production process of a song or teach them how to play it on a certain instrument. The young demographic on musical.ly is eager to learn and the perfect audience to teach.
- If you do want to take advantage of the lip syncing capabilities that originally made musical.ly so popular, encourage fans to share their musical.ly videos with a hashtag for one of the artist’s songs. These can be shared on other social profiles such as Instagram and Twitter for even further reach.
Whenever you can create videos using trending songs and hashtags, this will boost the chances of your video being seen on the platform. Above all, be creative and have fun, musical.ly is known for its positive atmosphere!
