Musical.ly blends with TikTok for upgraded short-form videos

Parent company of the lip-sync video app Musical.ly, Bytedance, has decided to merge it with a similar app called TikTok.

Both the short-form video apps will be available exclusively under the TikTok name, FastCompany reported. Existing users of Musical.ly will automatically receive the upgrade. With the upgrade, the most popular elements of Musical.ly and TikTok will be incorporated into a new feed with highlights from community, recommendation section, and new reaction features. 

Recent reports suggested that Social media giant Facebook has plans to take on Musical.ly, with its own lip-syncing feature.

According to researcher and code-breaker Jane Manchun Wong, the company is said to be working on ‘Talent Show’ which would allow users to compete with each other by singing popular songs and submitting their audition for review.

At the moment, the feature is only restricted to Facebook Pages. Users will not be able to share their videos directly to friends as well. TechCrunch pointed out that Facebook began forging deals with all record labels, including the majors like Universal, Sony, and Warner, and several others last year. The deals imply that the company will not have to take down users’ videos with copyrighted music playing in the background.

With inputs from ANI