Ever needed a musical soundtrack to life’s fly-or-fail moments? Thanks to Flipagram’s new record label deal, major music rosters and publishers such as Sony and BMG are teaming with the fast-developing mobile app to let you pair tunes with your memorable flicks. It’s also the first fully-licensed app of its kind with music functionalities.
“Music is at the core of this project,” Flipagram’s founder and CEO Farhad Mohit told VIBE. “It’s all about the narrative, and it provides the easiest way to create visual stories.”
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Mohit said that though the company has not yet endorsed celebrities, the list of A-listers who are using the app is enough influence in itself. From Rae Sremmurd, Jamie Foxx, Akon and K Camp to Jodeci, Questlove, Miguel and Charlie Wilson, hip-hop and R&B’s top influencers have already co-signed the collage-friendly app.
The star power couldn’t have hurt Flipagram’s growth, which spiked in its first year following its launch. The app’s user base grew to 30 million, raking in $70 million with 700 million shares per day in 2014. The success has allowed for full-catalog use of artist’s song clips in any story, a deal Mohit described as one of the most difficult to materialize.
“It took us a long time to get everyone lined up behind such a use case in a little over a year,” he said. “Rights packages take time to get through, and some can be complicated. Getting everyone to agree on what it would look like, ideally, was the toughest challenge we ran into.”
Still, it’s all about telling a story via photos that Mohit says is Flipagram’s main focus. “We view this as a photo-video storytelling app. The visuals are what’s telling the story while the music gives emotion and tone,” he said. “The music is an accompanying piece to the story—it gives it power.”—Diamond Hillyer
Bring your moments to life with Flipagram here.