Musical.ly will cease to exist as a video app and all its contents will be made available from TikTok, an app almost in the same genre but much more popular in China. Beijing Bytedance Technology Co is the owner of both these apps and Musical.ly was acquired by it only last December.
The similarity between both is that users can share short videos they make on the app. Users sing or dance to their favorite tune and record it. A few special effects can also be added. The main difference between Musical.ly and TikTok is the former has users in the US and Europe while TikTok is confined to Asia. And the other difference is in the numbers; just 100 million active monthly users for Musical.ly against 500 million for TikTok. Now they will be merged.
The company says it chose to retain the TikTok brand and let go Musical.ly because TikTok’s contents are more broad-based; it has not only music and dance but there’s comedy and other performing arts and reflects the customers’ tastes more effectively.
The company Beijing Bytedance Technology Co also owns another popular news app, Tautiao which also commands good valuation as a tech startup. Running a news app in China is no child’s play and Tautiao faced its share of trouble with the authorities and another app it had which carried jokes had to be pulled out completely
Beijing Bytedance Technology Co also says the basic objective is to bring out the creativity in people and make them share it within a community of like-minded people. They are also introducing some new features like an alert that tells a user he or she has spent more than 2 hours on the site. All existing accounts and content will move automatically to the new TikTok app.