Beginning today, Apple will provide music for popular lip-sync app Musical.ly, which enables users to create 15-second music video covers of their favorite songs.
Apple’s move to supply songs for Musical.ly, first reported by Recode, is part of a larger deal between the two companies. Musical.ly, which was founded in 2014 and reportedly counts more than 200 million users today, will also enable users to stream full songs — and even save songs via playlists — from the Apple Music catalog directly within the Musical.ly app. In order to utilize this feature, however, users must be Apple Music subscribers.
Musical.ly also works with music distributor 7digital to source songs, and will continue to do so.
“Right now, the average time our users spend on the app is over 35 minutes per day, so they’re already in an environment that they really enjoy,” Musical.ly president Alex Hofmann told Billboard. “So they can spend more time within the Musical.ly app to listen to music, but then they can also go to Apple Music later and listen to the entire album.”
The Apple Music integration, the thinking goes, could help convert Musical.ly’s massive teen audience into Apple Music subscribers. Hofmann said that Musical.ly is in similar talks with competing streaming apps like Spotify and Pandora, and that additional partnerships with Apple are in the works.
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