Over the past year, few new apps have captured the attention of the music industry -- and teenagers across the globe -- than Musical.ly, the social video network that allows users to make 15-second clips set to music and share them with more than 200 million fellow users. Now, the fast-growing company, founded in 2014, has announced a new partnership with Apple Music -- with more integration on the way.
With the new partnership, Musical.ly users will be able to stream full-length songs -- rather than just 15-second clips -- from Apple Music's catalog directly within the Musical.ly app, with the further option to save particular songs to their own playlists within Apple Music and access Musical.ly-branded playlists via the streaming service as well. Users will need to be subscribers to Apple's streaming service in order to access the feature, which will also allow them to select any 15-second section from the full-length track within the app with which to create their videos. (Users are still limited to 15-second videos, however.)
"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," said Alex Hofmann, Musical.ly's president, North America in an interview with Billboard this week. "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."