Musical.ly Shuts Down Live.ly, Will Merge Live-Streaming Into Main App
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Musical.ly, the social-video sharing and lip-syncing app maker, is killing off Live.ly two years after it launched the standalone app for live-streaming video.
Instead, will merge the live-streaming features of into its primary app, which the company says has 60 million monthly active users. The shutdown of Live.ly was first reported by TechCrunch .
“Live-streaming from Live.ly is moving to Musical.ly — our goal is to make it easy to enjoy your favorite short videos and your favorite live content, all in one place,” said a company rep. Users of Musical.ly will be gradually getting the ability to live-stream video over the next few weeks.
Musical.ly didn’t immediately have info on how many active Live.ly users it had. According to mobile-analytics firm Sensor Tower, Live.ly had more than 26 million installs to date, with the U.S. accounting for about 70% of installs. In the first quarter of 2018, downloads of the app were down about 41% year-over-year from Q1 2017 — indicating a big loss of momentum.
The move comes after Musical.ly was acquired by Chinese tech giant Bytedance last year in a deal reportedly worth up to $1 billion .
In its first few months, Live.ly had initially attracted a number of top creators to the platform, some of whom said they were making tens of thousands of dollars per month via digital “gifts” purchased by their fans.
Under Bytedance’s ownership, Musical.ly has operated as an independent platform headed by co-founders Louis Yang and Alex Zhu, while collaborating with its parent. Musical.ly has announced the creation of a $50 million in a fund to support its users (or “Musers” in the company’s lingo) with scholarship programs and co-development deals with users and media partners.