Musical.ly strikes popularity after its launch in 2014. The app allowed young users to post short clips of their lip-syncing to popular songs that drew a predominantly huge user base. But, as per industry sources, Yet the app faced challenges trying to monetize through advertising because the core users are young. Although the minimum age required to join the app is 13, past reports have recommended that most of the users were in grade school.

Musical.ly reached 100 million monthly active users, which evolved as a profound teen karaoke app. ByteDance implemented its smart strategy by taking in Musical.ly to break into the US market. According to the Sensor Tower reports (US research firm), TikTok was the world’s most downloaded iOS app in the first quarter of 2018. Both apps have a core feature in common: short-form videos that run up to 15 seconds.

Historical Difference

Musical.ly was created by longtime friends Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. TikTok was founded by Byte Dance’s CEO and its founder Zhang Yiming. The app was launched in September 2016. TikTok has its predominant user base in China and Asian countries. Musical.ly has its user base in the United States and European countries. Unlike TikTok, Musical.ly has only one app for every market.           

TikTok Features

TikTok is embedded with the most popular features with a feed that highlights the community of users. Additionally, the “For You” part serves curated and personalized video suggestions based on viewer preferences. TikTok will also launch new upcoming features, including:

  1. “reaction” element that enables users to react towards friends’ videos directly from the phone.
  2. Interactive gesture filters that serve as highly creative tools unlock features such as funhouse mirror camera effects;
  3. Background effects with green screen light;
  4. Also, just through blinking, the user can activate VR filters;

Creative Content

The content type is another fundamental difference. Although the musical aspect predominantly occupies TikTok, a wide variety of content ranging from monologues to comedy videos is available in TikTok. In contrast, Musical.ly exclusively concentrates on the creation of choreography and music videos. After Musical.ly was completely integrated into TikTok, it was no longer recognized as an independent application. Therefore, its logo disappeared, and its huge audience became part of a new social network. Today, even the old official website of Musical.ly is redirected to TikTok, and there are no more traces of Musical.ly. You can buy TikTok likes as there are many paid services on this platform.

 The Community

The users do not spend much time on the “following page.” On musical.ly, the user had to choose who they want to follow based on their Featured videos, song remake, etc. That’s why it has become easier to get popular on TikTok though it is hard if you were to follow every person you like. Musical.ly only promotes beautiful figures.

TikTok’s success over younger audiences is quite similar to Facebook and Snapchat. Initially, Facebook began as a college-only platform and later gained popularity among other age groups. Snapchat followed the same strategy of capturing a younger demographic first, then aging up. Like every other social media platform, TikTok eventually does the same. It would eventually age up though it skews younger.

Effective User Experience

Users can select the preferred song they wish to use in their video first and then do their recording to mimic the music.

Also, users can first record their video and then select a song. The app has lots of ways to include more fun to user’s videos. For instance, there are options to record in slow-motion, fast forward, time-lapse, filters, effects, or play the song from the end, etc. Once users are satisfied with the output, they can post it on their profile and share it on other social media networks. TikTok also provides a duet feature that connects with the other user. TikTok and Musical.ly developed from the parent company ByteDance – a technology-based company having its headquarters in China. The company combined the video-sharing apps into one consolidated app and named it TikTok.

Therefore Musical.ly has transformed into TikTok. As a profound platform for sharing videos, TikTok allows users to upload their videos of dancing lip-syncing, sharing jokes, etc. Selfies is one of the primary elements of the videos as TikTokers use their phone cameras for recording their performances and sharing them across the world.