Facebook releases BARS, the rap app

Apps for creating short musical, visual, attention-grabbing clips have been all the rage these years. We’ve been through viral platforms such as Vine, Musical.ly, TikTok, and now, we’ve got BARS. Facebook seems to want in on the fad as it just came out with a new app that allows you to release the rapper within you by easily recording and sharing up to 60-second-long clips. The experimental app, currently in its beta version, is only available in the App Store for iPhone users—but who knows where time will take it.

The way the app works is very simple. It’s got a database of hundreds of professionally created beats to choose from and rap to. Rather than creating music alongside friends, as in Facebook’s similar app Collab, BARS aims to offer an easy and accessible platform for aspiring rappers to share their individual talent. It offers features like autotune, and auto-suggestion of rhymes for your lines as you rap. The app also offers an entertaining “Challenge” mode, made to feel more like a game and which provides word cues for freestyling. There are plenty of customizations available, including a variety of visual and audio filters, to personalize the production.

The app was developed by a team of aspiring rappers who are also part of Facebook’s NPE (New Product Experimentation) development team. They personally realized the value such a platform could bring to young musicians, perhaps green in the music world but passionate about sharing their talent. The pandemic lockdown, which has closed performance venues and formerly available public platforms to musicians, influenced the app’s creators to allow artists to share their work online even if they could not do so live.

As the app is still being perfected, it remains to be seen how well BARS will do in the App Store. Although it is publicly available for download, there is a growing waitlist which new users must join to participate in a closed beta test before full public access.