Business News Deals Digital

Musical.ly acquired in deal worth up to $1 billion

By | Published on Friday 10 November 2017

Musical.ly

Musically-orientated social network Musical.ly has been acquired by Chinese media firm Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. The deal is worth between $800 million and $1 billion, according to various reports.

Founded in China in 2014 and popular with The Kids, particularly in the US, Musical.ly allows users to create short music videos. It claims over 200 million registered users. Bytedance announced the deal to buy the platform this morning, although did not disclose the value of the deal. It also said that Musical.ly will continue to operate as a standalone company.

Bytedance CEO Zhang Yiming said in a statement: “Musical.ly will continue to operate as an independent platform, integrating Bytedance’s global leading AI technology and leveraging its reach in China and key markets across Asia to enhance Musical.ly’s offering to users, creators, and partners”.

Musical.ly co-founder Alex Zhu adds: “Musical.ly’s vision is to make entertainment more personal, participatory and interactive, by enabling anyone to be a content creator. We see AI as a critical factor in augmenting human creativity. Bytedance’s leading AI technologies and top-notch AI developers can empower us to innovate faster and roll out new user offerings unlike anything users have experienced before”.

He continues: “We have recently also been focused on expanding into Asian markets, and this partnership will allow us to access Bytedance’s massive userbase in China, Japan and Korea, and around Asia. This will enable us to provide a completely unique experience to our content creators, influencers, celebrities, and media partners on the platform”.

Earlier this year, Musical.ly announced integration with Apple Music, allowing users to listen to complete songs before chopping out fifteen seconds for their latest video.



READ MORE ABOUT: |