Subject: musical.ly partners with media companies to launch short-form shows

14 June 2017 - Press release

musical.ly joins forces with Hearst Magazines Digital Media, NBCUniversal and Viacom to create a first-of-its-kind in-app content experience to launch today

 
musical.ly, the world's fastest growing entertainment social network, announced today a new content partnership with Hearst Magazines Digital Media (HMDM), NBCUniversal and Viacom to launch premium short-form shows on the platform, further diversifying the content available for its users to engage with and to enjoy.

The media companies will produce studio-quality shows for musical.ly that will be featured prominently on the platform. This new content experience will be a first-of-its-kind for musical.ly and for "musers," who will now be able to watch high-quality programming and create their own content in response to it by using specific hashtags. The new premium content experience further expands musical.ly's position in the entertainment, music and pop culture space.  As with all videos on musical.ly, all new content from these media partners will be free for users to watch. 

HMDM will premiere two titles under the Seventeen brand: 'Fashion to DIY For,' revealing how users can create runway looks at home; and 'Seventeen and the City,' highlighting hidden gems in New York. In the coming weeks, HMDM is planning to roll out another series providing users with beauty tips, tricks, and tutorials to try at home.

NBCUniversal will launch with a title under the E! umbrella called CRUSH, which is a comedic exploration of social media stars' celebrity crushes; several musers are set to appear in the show. Shortly after launch, a new show around NBC's 'World of Dance' will premiere on the service, with both companies noting projects in the pipeline for the Telemundo brand.
 
Viacom will launch two series on the platform: a musical.ly-specific take on US television personality Nick Cannon's hit show 'Wild N' Out' and a partially animated comedic series called 'Greatest Party Story Ever,' with several musers lined up to appear.

Honouring its roots as a platform for creators, these shows are participatory in nature and exemplify musical.ly's "lean-forward" entertainment content. Linked from each video will be a dedicated UGC ("user generated content") hashtag page encouraging viewers to submit reactions to what they have just seen based on a prompt by the media partners. In this way, the new short-form shows on musical.ly provide a content experience that is jointly engaging and high-quality.

musical.ly is available for download through the Apple App Store, Google play, or the Amazon Appstore.