Musical.ly, an app that lets its users create their own music videos, announced a partnership with Apple Music Friday that includes both a direct integration of Apple Music’s catalog as well as some cross-promotion of both services.
Musical.ly users who happen to also pay for an Apple Music subscription are now able to play full songs from Apple’s catalog of 30-some million within the Musical.ly app. Users will also be able to save their favorite songs as part of a Musical.ly playlist, and the Musical.ly team will begin to curate its own playlists within Apple Music.
There’s no word yet on further promotional tie-ins, but we shouldn’t be too surprised to see Apple Music make good use of being on Musical.ly: A source with knowledge of the partnership told Variety that we might some additional efforts once Apple launches its version of “Carpool Karaoke” on Apple Music.
“Carpool Karaoke,” which is based on the celebrity-laden music format from “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” was originally scheduled to debut on Apple Music in April. However, earlier this week, Apple revealed that it had to delay the launch of the show without announcing a new launch date.
With Musical.ly, Apple is potentially getting access to a much younger customer base for Apple Music. The app, and its live streaming sibling Live.ly, have been a huge hit with teenagers in particular. Musical.ly’s users created some 3.6 billion music videos with the app in 2016, and the company claims to have more than 200 million users.
