Musical.ly

Rebranded

Shanghai, China (with U.S. offices in Santa Monica, California) · Founded 2014

201-500 employees · ~$26.5M (pre-acquisition funding rounds)

Sourced & current · updated Jun 25, 2026

Musical.ly was a Chinese-developed lip-sync/music video app. ByteDance acquired it November 10, 2017 for ~$800M-$1B and merged it into TikTok on August 2, 2018. Musical.ly brand retired.

Where they sit

Stack tier: Ecosystem Services (A)

Social Media ManagementContent Discovery

Musical.ly was the dominant short-form lip-sync video platform in Western markets prior to its merger into TikTok, with over 200 million registered users at peak.

Ownership

Parent: ByteDance