Musical.ly disappear and find a new home in Tik Tok
Musical.ly are closing their doors but lip-syncers need not fear as they’re joining Tik Tok for a combined video experience in one place.
Musical.ly are closing their app and losing their brand as part of a merger with similar app Tik Tok. The merger will see Musical.ly’s users and content join Tik Tok’s short-form video platform for a unified experience of user-created videos.
Chinese firm Bytedance bought Musical.ly last November for $1 billion and are now combining it with Tik Tok which they also own. The co-founder of Musical.ly and senior vice-president of Tik Tok, Alex Zhu says: “Combining Musical.ly and TikTok is a natural fit given the shared mission of both experiences – to create a community where everyone can be a creator.”
Whereas Musical.ly is a platform where anyone can come and create short videos to millions of the biggest and latest songs, Tik Tok focuses on a broader video experience where users can create short videos with music, stickers and animations to liven it up. Musical.ly have just reached a milestone of 100 million users whilst Tik Tok are even more ridiculously popular with a community of 500 million video creators and lovers.
Musical.ly users will find themselves with a news feed spread across more countries than before as well as personalised recommendations. With the merging of the two platforms Tik Tok are also upgrading their app with fun new features allowing users to react to videos as well as enhanced creative tools.
Tik Tok are also launching a new series of creator programmes which provide users with technical support, performance insights and guidance on growth strategy. They are also launching a safety centre “to build an online experience that feels safe and welcoming”.
Whilst Tik Tok will now feature Musical.ly’s community and lip-sync video creating opportunities the Chinese version of the app, named Douyin, will remain a standalone app.