About

Musical.ly was a social network video app designed for messaging, live streaming and video production. The app allows users to create 15-second to 1-minute long videos with a customizable soundtrack. Additionally, users can manipulate the video speed and picture quality through filters and effects. It is available for mobile platforms iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle. As of May 2017, the app has more than 200 million users worldwide. In 2018, the app was merged with competitor TikTok, following a buyout.

History

Musical.ly was launched after co-founders Alex Zhu and Louis Yang pivoted away from a video production app aimed at the education sector in 2014. The team designed an app that allowed educators to create 3-5 minute videos on any subject. However, after they realized how difficult it would be for educators to create such short videos, they realized the app would fail.^[1]

With 8% of the capital left from the education app, the two used the technology to found Musical.ly. Zhu says that he came up with the idea after noticing a group of teenagers, half of which were listening to music, while the other half took selfies. He soon realized that combining social networking with music could capture the early teen demographic.

Musical.ly launched in July 2014 for Apple's iOS mobile platform. On July 6ht, 2015, the app reached number one position in the iTunes App Store.

On July 24th, 2016, they launched a live-streaming platform live.ly, which reached the number one position within three days of launching.

ByteDance Buyout

On November 8th, 2017, Musical.ly was acquired by Bytedance Technology Co, the owners of Musical.ly competitor TikTok, for $800 million.^[2]

The following year, on August 2nd, Bytedance shutdown Musical.ly and began moving users and user data to TikTok. In a statement,^[5] the company said:

Musical.ly is growing and evolving, with a new name. With Musical.ly and TikTok merged, the mission remains unchanged, and we continue our social media revolution by truly enabling everyone to be creator [sic]. Also, our users will enjoy a much bigger and more global community, better content experience, and faster product innovations in the future.

Online, fans of Musical.ly expressed sadness about the merger. Twitter ^[6] user @SimraSays tweeted, RIP http://Musical.ly 😓 Now everyone Use Tik Tok ❤." The post (shown below, left) received more than 100 retweets and 130 likes in 24 hours.

However, detractors of Musical.ly expressed joy that the app was being shut down. Twitter^[7]

Features

Musical.ly allows users to create videos by choosing music and shooting video or choosing video from their device library. The camera offers different filter called "Lenses" and live streaming. In addition, the user can set the length of time the video records for.

The app also allows users to pick music from their device library or from a library pre-selected by Musical.ly. Users can also reuse sounds from other users.

Like Instagram or Snapchat, user can follow and interact with people in the Musical.lu community. They can search for people too follow and send messages to people on the app as well. There is also a trending gallery with hashtags to reach wider audiences and discover new videos.

Highlights

On October 20th, Musical.ly and its user base were given the cover story in Billboard magazine.^[3] The article was entitled "Musical.ly's Teenage Revolution: How the Trend-Setting Lip-Sync App Is Changing the Music Industry."

By the end of May 2017, the app had reached more than 200 million users. The announcement led to a partnership with Apple Music, allowing the streaming service to be fully integrated into the app.

Jacob Sartorious

Jacob Sartorius is an American pop singer who gained much online notoriety for posting lip dub music videos on the social networks Vine and Musical.ly. He joined Musical.ly on September 7th 2015.

Related Memes

Rick and Morty Musical.ly Videos

Rick and Morty Musical.ly Videos refer to dubbed videos posted on the video-sharing social network Musical.ly, in which participants cosplay as various Rick and Morty characters while lip-syncing lines from the television show or pop songs. Online, the videos have been widely mocked as ill-conceived and cringeworthy.

Search Interest

External References