MTV Partners With musical.ly For Inaugural Musers Casting Call for Special “My Super Sweet 16” Episode

MTV Partners With musical.ly For Inaugural Musers Casting Call for Special “My Super Sweet 16” Episode

MTV Becomes First Media Brand on musical.ly to Reach One Million Fans

New York, NY (April 3, 2017) – MTV and entertainment social network musical.ly today launched a first-of-its-kind partnership to cast a special episode for the forthcoming return of the iconic series “My Super Sweet 16.” This partnership marks the first time MTV has used a mobile app to audition and cast talent for a series on the network. Musers can submit an entry video beginning today using the hashtag #MySuperSweetAudition for a chance to move on to a second round with producers and potentially be featured in an upcoming episode.

“MTV’s musical.ly initiatives for the past year have helped build one of the most successful direct fan engagement programs on the platform,” said Chris McCarthy, President of MTV, VH1 and Logo.  “The casting for ‘My Super Sweet 16’ is just the beginning of engaging the muser audience more deeply into current and future MTV programming.”

“It’s exciting to see MTV and musical.ly partnering together to discover emerging talent in real time,” said Alex Hofmann, President of musical.ly, North America. “Together we’re innovating the casting process and giving creators and consumers a chance to get a behind-the-scenes look at how talent is discovered.  At musical.ly we want to empower our community to help shape the next generation of entertainers. This partnership with MTV allows our community to become co-creators and active participants in the development of a show.”

MTV was an early adopter on the musical.ly platform and is now the first media brand to surpass one million fans. Past integrations include the 2016 “MTV Video Music Awards” “Song of the Summer” award, sponsored by Verizon, that asked Musers to choose from 10 nominated songs to make musical.ly videos and submit them to be counted as a vote. Both likes on videos and videos created served as eligible votes, notching over 900,000 videos and 20 million likes created in a week.
The MTV and musical.ly partnership will continue to evolve as the two companies work together on a premium content project slated to launch next quarter.

MTV is a global youth culture brand inspired by music.   MTV is a unit of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA)

About musical.ly
Founded in 2014, by creator Alex Zhu and longtime friend, Luyu Yang, musical.ly is an entertainment social network for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. Every day, millions of people use musical.ly as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing. The app celebrates creativity with videos that are shared across the musical.ly community. With over 200 million users, musical.ly has hit #1 in the iOS app store for free apps in 20 countries – including the United States. In June of 2016, musical.ly released its breakout livestreaming platform live.ly, which provides the musical.ly community with a broader canvas on which they can express themselves. Immediately following its official launch, live.ly began trending and hit the number one spot in 8 countries in the iOS app store. musical.ly is available for download through the Apple App Store, Google play, or the Amazon Appstore.