Musical.ly announces integration with Apple Music

28 April 2017 - Press release

Integration Enables Apple Music Subscribers to Stream Full Length Songs and More Via musical.ly

musical.ly, the world’s fastest growing entertainment social network, today announced an integration with Apple Music that enables subscribers to stream full length songs within the app. Starting today, musical.ly users (“musers”) who are also Apple Music subscribers will have the ability to play a song from start to finish inside musical.ly. The integration also allows musers to save their favourite songs to a custom “musical.ly playlist” in addition to listening to playlists curated by musical.ly at applemusic.com/musically. This is the latest in a series of initiatives launched by musical.ly that supports new music discovery through friends and provides musers with a space to engage and connect with music on a deeper level.

Founded in 2014 by creator Alex Zhu and longtime friend, Luyu Yang, musical.ly has grown to over 200 million users. Every day, millions of people use musical.ly as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and entertaining content. The app celebrates creativity with videos that are shared across the musical.ly community.

“At musical.ly we are focused on providing our passionate community of musers with the best experience possible when it comes to discovering new music,” said Alex Hofmann, President of musical.ly, North America. “The integration with Apple Music gives musers a new listening experience and further layers into their connection with the music they are already creating content to in musical.ly. We are excited about the possibilities this creates for musers to share and discover new music with their friends.”

Its popularity among 13 to 25-year-olds has made musical.ly one of the leading destinations for music discovery and for creators to launch careers. Last October, musical.ly launched a new program called #NextWave to support music discovery on the app. Every month, the #NextWave folder contains 15 songs from new and emerging artists. The artist that has the most videos created to their song in the #NextWave folder, earn a campaign on musical.ly’s coveted homepage, providing exposure to over 200 million musers.  

#NextWave winners so far include Anne-Marie's "Alarm," Charli XCX's "After the Afterparty," Timeflies' "Gravity, Marian Hill’s “Down,” and MadeinTYO’s “Skateboard P.” Several #NextWave winners watched their songs crack the music charts outside of musical.ly as a result.

In addition to #NextWave, musical.ly recently launched the #FirstListen and #FirstLook series featuring exclusive sneak peeks of songs and music videos. #FirstListen launched with Kygox Selena Gomez's #ItAintMeFIRSTLISTEN followed by a sneak peek of Zedd x Alessia Cara's #StayFIRSTLISTEN.

musical.ly has attracted major artists and entertainers including Olly Murs, The Vamps, Jonas Blue, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande  to name a few.

Some of today’s most beloved viral stars got their start on musical.ly, including Baby Ariel, a 15-year-old Florida native who began uploading videos to songs by Justin Bieber and Drake and has earned nearly 19 million followers on musical.ly. 14 year old, UK sibling duo Max & Harvey have also garnered huge popularity in the last 12 months with nearly 3 million followers and a debut single release!