Looking for something new, and perhaps a little quirky for your next binge watch? Try MyMusic, the brainchild of Benny and Rafi Fine, or the “Fine Brothers” as they are commonly known, a co-director, producer, writer team that has been putting content online since 2004. After spending years making popular YouTube videos, including their Kids React videos and Spoilers series, the pair has created YouTube’s first weekly “transmedia” sitcom.
The show is a surreal mockumentary about a music news startup called “MyMusic.” Much like The Office, it follows the work lives of MyMusic employees. Indie, the resident hipster and CEO of MyMusic, can’t be bothered to remember his workers’ real names so each character goes by the genre of music they are associated with. Idol, for example, is MyMusic’s head of social media and the queen of all things pop, including claiming to have invented the ‘duck face’ that has been sweeping selfies Internet wide. The show, which essentially focuses on the work of different kinds of people finding common ground, is brimming with silly surreal twists, including the office’s resident Bigfoot, inanimate employee “Scarfman,” who is entirely made of scarves, and a talent booker, named Dubstep, who speaks exclusively in stylized beatboxing.
MyMusic was originally pitched to YouTube as a year-long weekly sitcom — a feat in itself — but it has become far more that just a scripted show. MyMusic expanded its reach by wrapping the main show in an entire ecosystem of supporting materials. The channel is rounded out with addditional videos in which real musicians interact with the show’s fictional characters: MyMusic Presents is a live performance series; MyMusic News is a magazine show that covers real world music events; and The Mosh is a scripted talkback in which the characters from the main show reply to questions fans post to the show’s various social media platforms.
And this is where MyMusic becomes transmedia. The project uses social media as a creative medium, blurring reality by creating accounts for all of the show’s fictional characters. A great example happened early in the show’s first season when Metal, the MyMusic team’s newest member, started a one-man revolution protesting Indie’s failure to provide him with a desk. Locking all the other staff members in the conference room, Metal proceeded to produce all of MyMusic’s news and social media himself. The show’s Facebook, Twitter, and various other accounts reacted in real time to the fictional events on the sitcom.
