According to a fresh report from Recode, widely popular music video app Musical.ly has signed a partnership agreement with Apple Music. It will see the Cupertino provide the former with song snippets required to record and share short music videos of their own, while singing along to trending songs.
Citing sources aware of the development, the publication suggests Musical.ly will have to drop its current U.K-based songs snippets provider 7digital. The responsibilities of the said partner will now be transferred to Apple Music, which will be immensely beneficial for the music video recording app. The switchover is expected to go official on 28th April 2017, i.e Friday.
Once Musical.ly jumps ship from its previous music provider to Apple Music, the subscribers of the latter music streaming platform will be able to stream complete songs in the Musical.ly app itself. The non-subscribers will only get access to mini clips of the songs. This has always been the case with iTunes, and later with Apple Music because it enables you to listen to only 30-second snippets of the songs.
But, that’s not all. This partnership with Cupertino will also enable the music video recording platform to expand its presence from current 30 countries to 120 countries. Earlier, it had been restricted from operating in certain regions due to lack of licensing deals but Apple Music has a treasure trove of the same. With regards to the same, Recode adds:
Apple’s extensive licensing deals will allow Musical.ly to expand the number of countries it supports from 30 to 120. And connecting with Musical.ly gives Apple a new marketing venue.
It is true that Cupertino has been looking to expand the scope of its music streaming service and Musical.ly can just be the first step in that very direction. Apple Music’s user base has steadily been growing and has already crossed 20 million subscribers earlier last year. Musical.ly users will be able to simply subscribe to Apple Music, adding to its paid tier subscriber count, to gain access to the complete library of songs.
As for Musical.ly, the company was founded by Alex Zhu and longtime friend, Luyu Yang back in 2014. It describes itself as a ‘video social network’ popular among U.S teens and tweens for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. It rose to popularity across the globe just year as it enabled you to creatively express yourself through song lyrics – by singing, dancing, lip-syncing or comedy. It now boasts to have over 100 million registered users, a live video streaming app ‘live.ly’ and more than $16.5 million in funding from the likes of Cheetah Mobile, Greylock Partners, and DCM Ventures among others.
We’ve contacted both Apple and Musical.ly for more info on this partnership. You will be updated once we hear back from either of the two.
