Popular teen app Musical.ly sold to Chinese tech giant Bytedance

2025-04-28 06:12:48admin

$1 billion. That was the price tag for what's cool, according to ~~Justin Timberlake~~Sean Parker's conversation with Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg.

Apparently, it's still true.

Musical.ly just sold to Beijing Bytedance Technology, the companies announced Friday. The price tag was between $800 million to $1 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. If you haven't heard of Musical.ly, you may be old — or perhaps you just forgot about it.

SEE ALSO: Devastated teens lose their streaks after Snapchat goes down

After launching three years ago, the smartphone app quickly became a viral sensation. The concept was simple: Create 15-second music videos. Tweens and teens became obsessed with lip-syncing to their favorite songs. By 2016, it had attracted 100 million users. It even launched some new social media stars like Jacob Sartorius.

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Musical.ly was seen as another form of social media and short-form creation, competing with Twitter's Vine, Facebook's Instagram, and Snapchat. Its audience skewed young. More than 60 percent of its users were between 13 and 20 years old, according to Fast Company.

"What was amazing is we saw the followers continuing to grow elsewhere. That super growth was something I hadn’t seen in awhile. After having seen Vine come and go, a lot of creators saw this as the next big thing," said Shira Lazar, CEO and on-air personality of What's Trending.

But the fun might have peaked, which could be a reason for selling out. Most of its users were acquired in the first two years, and it did not grow much beyond that core user base of teens and younger people, according to Recode.

Lazar said her company saw a peak in engagement and viewership in the summer of 2016. She noted that they're still betting on the platform and having success.

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One of the most interesting parts of Musical.ly's sellout is the buyer. Notably, it's not Facebook. Zuckerberg's company has made itself known for spotting and acquiring buzzy apps. Most recently, Facebook bought tbh, an anonymous quiz app that had attracted 5 million users in about a month.

There's a rumor among the creator community that Facebook offered a similar price tag to Musical.ly last summer, around the time that Facebook bought musical selfie app Eyegroove. Musical.ly apparently turned it down.

Rather than the world's largest social network swooping in again, a Chinese media giant closed the deal.

But rather than the world's largest social network swooping in again, a Chinese media giant closed the deal. Bytedance defines itself as "a leading AI-powered content platform." It owns Chinese media company Jinri Toutiao, which also acquired video app Flipagram in February.

The acquisition is mutually beneficial. According to Musical.ly, they want to take advantage of Bytedance's technology.

"Musical.ly's vision is to make entertainment more personal, participatory and interactive, by enabling anyone to be a content creator. To achieve this, we need to constantly innovate to provide new and exciting video creation tools to our users, and we see AI as a critical factor in augmenting human creativity," Alex Zhu, co-founder and co-CEO of Musical.ly, said in a statement.

For Bytedance, they're looking to grow in new markets. Currently, its user base is mainly in China, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere in Asia. Like Flipagram, Musical.ly attracted a large audience in the U.S. along with Europe, South America, and India.

"By integrating Musical.ly's global reach with Bytedance's massive user base in China and key Asian markets we are creating a significant global platform for our content creators and brands to engage with new markets," Yiming Zhang, founder and CEO of Bytedance, said in a statement.

For the Musical.ly user, it remains to be seen what will change. When Facebook bought Instagram, it helped grow it to another massive social network by integrating it with the larger platform and introducing new features like video. When Twitter bought Vine, it inspired growth for a bit but eventually shut it down.

Lazar of What's Trending said she hoped they'll improve content discovery in the app.

"They want more discovery so it’s not just some people who blow up on the platform. So, new people can come in and become stars," Lazar said.

For video creators, revenue-making options is vital. For now, some brands have experimented with Musical.ly, but the majority of their attention is on Facebook's properties. Musical.ly could improve its position by offering more analytics, Lazar suggested.

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