China’s Beijing Bytedance Technology Co (北京字節跳動科技) on Wednesday announced that it is shuttering the popular Musical.ly video app it acquired for nearly US$1 billion in December last year and is to move users to a revamped version of its homegrown competitor, TikTok.
Musical.ly, released in 2014, and TikTok, launched in 2016, both enable users to create and share short singing and dancing videos that are set to well-known songs, with numerous special-effects filters.
Although both apps were developed in China, Musical.ly became a sensation among teenagers in the Americas and Europe, while TikTok took off among young people in Asia.
“Musical.ly and TikTok currently operate in complementary geographies without much overlap and as both platforms continue to grow rapidly now is the time to bring them together,” Stefan Heinrich, head of global marketing at TikTok, said in an e-mail.
He said they are embracing the TikTok brand because it “better reflects the breadth of content created on our platform that extends beyond music to comedy, performance art and more.”
“Supporting one platform will allow us to expand our on-the-ground presence more quickly and easily — building local teams to support each market,” he said.
Musical.ly recently reached 100 million monthly active users, the company said.
TikTok said that in June it had 500 million monthly active users.
“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 (朱駿), cofounder of musical.ly and senior vice president of TikTok, said in a press release.
The new app is to let users access content from new countries and viewing options that were only available on one of the apps, Bytedance said in the release.
The company said existing users’ accounts and content would be moved “to the new TikTok app,” which was expected to be available in app stores late on Wednesday.
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