While a lot of kids are on TikTok or at least watching videos on them, not all the content there are of course meant for little ears, or rather, little eyes. If you want to explore your kids’ creativity when it comes to creating videos, Lego is offering you a safer and maybe even more fun alternative. Lego Vidiyo is their new music video making app and platform that brings together music, play, and augmented reality. This is their first project in partnership with the Universal Music Group (UMG).
The Lego Vidiyo is a service that’s targeted for kids 7-10 years old that combines the worlds of physical and digital play and adds the element of music. Play and music have been proved to be important to children’s development and harness their creativity as well. The platform is also heavily moderated and videos that will be uploaded have to pass the moderation test. Any video that has “personally identifying information”, including having real people in the video, cannot be uploaded and can only be viewed by the creator.
How it’s done is pretty simple but also creative and fun. Kids choose a song from the database of licensed songs from UMG which includes artists like 5 Seconds of Summer and Imagine Dragons. They will then need to scan one of the new Lego Minifigure or minifigs to add to the video. There are also BeatBit tiles that they need to scan to unlock digital augmented reality effects like black and white bling effects, confetti showers, X-ray vision, etc. There are also audio effects available like DJ scratching, mouse voice, sax solo, etc.
You then set the stage with the minifigs and the BeatBits and the brick-built models to scan their location and start production. The kids can then dance and trigger moves with their Lego character in AR for a 60-second performance. Afterward, they can edit and trim the video into shareable 5, 10, 15, or 20 second clips. If the video passes moderation, it can be uploaded to the App feed. Those that don’t pass can still be stored and viewed locally.
Lego Vidiyo will be available “in most countries” by March 1. We still don’t know a lot of the other details like how much it will cost and which countries will get this app and service. We’ll probably know more next month.