Facebook has released a new app that will allow users to make short music videos together, set to rival TikTok.
Collab promises to offer a new approach to collaborative music making, enabling people to create music videos split into three simultaneous parts. The idea is that each part will feature the same song played on a different instrument, with all three videos stitched together to create a full performance.
The app will allow friends or strangers to collaborate to create a song together, or a user can provide all three clips themselves.
Developed by Facebook’s new product experimentation division, the app hopes to emulate the collaborative success of TikTok, and much like the video sharing platform, all Collab videos must be posted on the app’s feed first before they can be used elsewhere.
Collab will also allow videos uploaded to the platform to be edited and remixed by users. So, if for example, you were looking for a guitar segment to add to your video, you could take any video posted publicly to Collab and include it in your own clip.
This means that, if Collab were to take off and attract celebrity users in the same way TikTok has, there’s a chance people could find themselves creating music videos featuring their favourite musicians.
The app will also allow people to create videos solely from other users’ clips without uploading anything of their own, so you don’t have to be musical yourself to get involved.
Launched initially as an invite-only beta on iOS, the app has likely been inspired by the huge number of musicians who have been getting creative in lockdown and performing collaboratively together via livestreams online.
The likes of Sam Smith and John Legend, Gary Barlow and Chris Martin, and the Backstreet Boys have all delighted social media users with their collaborative video performances, sewn together remotely.
The app follows the lead of TikTok in allowing its users to freely borrow and recreate others’ content without needing permission. The Chinese video sharing app has quickly become one of the most popular social media networks thanks to its recommended algorithms and exclusive music licensing deals, which allow users to sample the latest smash hits.
"Facebook's New Product Experimentation team is launching an invite-only beta of Collab, an iOS app that brings together creators and fans to create, watch, and mix and match original videos, starting with music," a company spokesperson told The Verge. "Digital spaces can connect us when we can't be together in person, and Collab is a new way to create together."
