The hugely popular teen app Musical.ly has a hit show on its hands
The three-year-old music app, where millions of young fans make videos of themselves lip syncing to hit songs, says that its has close to 400,000 fans watching a live show on its recently launched sister app, Live.ly.
Launched in February, the hour long live show is "After the Bell," a talk & variety series produced by Sweety High, which operates a content website and cranks out video for social media - all aimed at teen girls.
According to Sweety High CEO Frank Simonetti, each day's episode of "After the Bell," is streamed live by roughly 70,000 people each weekday at 3:00 p.m PST. The is something of a next generation "TRL" or "American Bandstand," featuring interviews with teen appealing stars like Taryn Manning from 'Orange is the New Black,' and performances from the likes of Alisan Porter ( a recent winner from NBC's "The Voice") and even top Musical.ly users who have built big followings such as Kristen Hancher.
"You think of all these young girls hidden behind phones," said Simonetti. "With this show, they can go into these meta worlds. There is this different level of engagement. They love the live experience where they can approximate reality."
Simonetti said "After the Bell" has already featured some marketers' products during live episodes, and traditional commercial breaks are a possibly.
To date, Musical.ly has primarily been focused on user-created video content. But for Live.ly, the plan is to push live content from creators and professionals, including more shows from Sweety High.
In fact, last month Bloomberg reported that the company is talking to media giants like Viacom and NBCUniversal about producing originals for Muslical.ly, which boasts of 200 million users globally.