Online spaces for short-form videos like TikTok and Instagram Reels house all kinds of content. As long as it doesn’t break the platform’s community guidelines, there’s probably someone out there on the app of your choice that’s creating video content you’d enjoy—you just have to find them.
In December, Facebook joined the competition with its launch of Collab, a music mash-up app that allowed users to have collaborative jam sessions. Now, the tech giant is testing out another video-sharing platform that caters to a more niche market.
Record and Share Raps With BARS
The new product experimentation (NPE) team of Facebook is launching a closed beta test for its newest product: BARS, a video-sharing app that allows rappers to create and share their raps.
Audio production tools can be expensive and difficult to understand, which is why the team behind the new app looked to provide an alternative for aspiring rappers. BARS allows you to select from a library of professionally-made beats and audio/video filters to record yourself rapping.
Download: BARS for iOS (Free)
When writing your lyrics or freestyling, BARS can help by suggesting rhymes to keep you on your flow. Your rap videos can be up to 60 seconds long, and you have the option to save them to your camera roll or share them to other social media platforms.
“[There is] no formal rap experience required [to use BARS]—you can create something great whether you’ve just thought of a dope couplet or have been freestyling for years,” writes BARS Community Manager DJ Iyer to the NPE Blog.
According to TechCrunch, the BARS user interface is very similar to TikTok. It also has a two tabs, but instead of TikTok’s Following and For You sections, you’ll find Featured and New feeds. The engagement buttons are also in the same spot: the bottom right corner of the screen with the creator name on the left-hand side.
Instead of giving videos a like or a heart like in other apps, you can give them a Fire—as many as you want.
Join the BARS Community
To get access to BARS, you’ll have to sign up for the waitlist in the app. The NPE Team says it’ll be sending invites in batches, starting with US users. You can keep up with the news about the app by following BARS on Instagram.
If you are looking to step up your audio recording setup, check out our comparison of USB and XLR microphones.