“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,” Alex Zhu, co-founder of Musical.ly and senior VP of TikTok, said in a statement.īytedance said TikTok will launch a series of new creator programs to provide technical support, performance insights and guidance on growth strategy. It includes a feed that highlights content from a users’ community and features a personalized video recommendations based on viewing preferences.
In an update a year ago, Musical.ly tried to broaden the app’s feature set to try to widen its appeal as a social-video platform it also had struck content partnerships with Viacom, NBCUniversal and Hearst Magazines Digital Media to produce original short-form series for Musical.ly.Īccording to Bytedance, the upgraded TikTok app incorporates the most popular elements of both TikTok and Musical.ly apps. It gained a large following, mostly in the U.S., with a user base skewing toward tween and teenage girls. Musical.ly started life as an app that let users record themselves lip-syncing along to songs and audio clips.
In June, Musical.ly shut down Live.ly, its live-streaming companion app, and encouraged users to switch to Cheetah Mobile’s LiveMe, a similar app in which Bytedance had committed invested $50 million in funding.