The History Of Musically
Musical.ly Inc. was created by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in Shanghai, China. The initial direction was to create an environment that combines music and video in an app. The team assessed that short music videos were not very common, and the reason was that although people like watching short videos, there aren’t many of them, as there were too few people who spend time making and sharing them. Therefore, their angle is to provide a massive amount of short music pieces, so that people can mix music into the video, making them better with little effort. Musical.ly was officially published in 2014.
Growth
At the start, the team introduced the app in both China and America. Even though the app was not very welcomed in China, their app got a lot of attention from American teenagers. As their team lacks manpower and resources, they mainly focus on the US demographic. The product quickly obtained a group of loyal users, although the total user number is not very large, they were very active.
In July 2015, the app continues to appeal to millions of users, allowing musers to use millions of songs. Musical.ly reached the number 1 position in the iOS App Store and became the most popular app in over 30 countries. In May 2016, the app had more than 70 million downloads, with over 10 million new videos daily.
Youth could quickly become famous on the internet with millions of followers with little effort for daily videos. There were even fans providers online such as ours for Musically. In June 2016, musical.ly partnered with Coca-Cola for their #ShareACoke promotion.
Musically had all the reason to become as popular as it was:
Focusing On The Right Demographic
Musical.ly appeals to young audience, as young as elementary school students.
With the trend of more and more young people having access to mobile devices, this contributes significantly to the app’s popularity. Technology is starting to invite the young generation and services that can capture this demographic’s heart are sure to prosper.
Musical.ly’s success is somewhat similar to that of Facebook and Snapchat. Facebook originally was a college-only platform in Harvard and later spread to a larger audience. Something similar happened to Snapchat, it was aimed at young users and then expanded.
Remember when your mom, aunt and other relatives started sending you friend requests on Facebook? Similarly, the lip-syncing virus slowly infected kids and teenagers before reaching more mature users.
Musical.ly Is Versatile
Another reason for the app’s success is its versatility. Its progression is similar to how Instagram was originally a tool before becoming a full-fledged social platform.
Instagram’s charm was that it helps users make better photos. It provided a platform where users take and share ordinary photos with their phones. This helped accumulate a strong user base, then the app transformed itself into a social media. Instagram is based on something useful, a solid foundation underneath for a social network.
Likewise, you can see the resemblance with musical.ly. Younger generations often can’t produce high quality, entertaining videos on their own, that is when the app comes to play. It makes content creation intuitive and easy for young people by giving them access to resources (filters, speed adjustment, professional audio library) to make engaging and high-quality content. I may not be the best video maker, but even I can patch up a decent video to share with people on the platform.
Merge With Tiktok
One day, Musical.ly users suddenly found their favourite app replaced with a new logo and name: TikTok. The app was made by ByteDance – a Chinese company in 2017, it absorbed Musical.ly and intergrated it into Tiktok. Former users are migrated over to their new equivalent TikTok accounts. The interface was new, but core features remain unchanged: up to 15 seconds videos. Many users expressed discomfort at first but soon got used to the new platform as it’s not much different from the previous.
The great lip-syncing app Musical.ly, which accumulated 100 million monthly active users, is now a crucial part of ByteDance’s grand scheme to break into the US market. In early 2018, TikTok was the most popular iOS app. It inherited musically’s success and continuously expanded the platform at an impressive speed.
