WorldStar Unveils Snapchat Discover Channel in an Effort to Produce Original Online Content

On September 10th, WorldStarHipHop unveiled a Snapchat Discover channel, also known as a “Publisher Story.” The company has traditionally been a content aggregator, but has since expanded to create its own original content as well.

WorldStar is now mostly known for crowd-sourced videos of fights, but it started as a place to download hip-hop mixtapes. It was started in 2005 by Lee “Q” O’Denat, who passed away in January 2017. The site has also been a place for artists on the rise to gain fans and popularity by posting music videos and interviews.

In the past couple of years, WorldStar began producing original content, like a Starz documentary series, MTV2 TV show, and a Netflix movie. It has signed a deal with Studio71, a digital entertainment company, that helped the content aggregator become a producer of its own online content. The deal included WorldStar’s YouTube channel as an addition to Studio 71’s network, which means Studio71 provides advice on how to grow an audience, sells ads for the channel, and makes branded-content deals through advertisers. The deal also included the new Snapchat Discover channel, which is ad-supported with revenue being split by Studio71 and WorldStar.

This Snapchat Discover channel has a 7 person Studio71 production team and will publish on weekdays. Content will cover news, interviews, and hosted shows all related to hip-hop culture. Most content will be made particularly and sometimes exclusively for this channel, in part because of Snapchat’s vertical video layout.

Learn more about WorldStar’s new Snapchat Discover channel and their own original online content by clicking here.