How to Make an App like Musical.ly/Tiktok

Music and videos making apps are apparently slaying youth and millennial so far, being specific it has become the ticket to glory for 20’s kids.

To retrospect, the time where more than three-fourths of youth binged on TV shows and Spotify to groove to an endless mix of music, have now taken a leap to bring themselves to light via popular social video networking app TikTok (previously Musical.ly).

Musical.ly is a video network app, where users (aka musers in app) can create 15-seconds videos single/duet by lip synching and dancing along to the musical clips embedded in the app or uploaded by themselves and share with the musical.ly community. It gives you the option to create the videos with your BFFs or people you follow and who follow you back.

What defines Musical.ly+TikTok?

Musical.ly which was launched in 2014 by Alex Zhu on Play store and App store had more than 100 million active monthly users, which is now taken over by Chinese video platform TikTok. In China, the app is known as Douyin and has over 300 million monthly active users, much bigger than Musical.ly’s reach.

Whilst TikTok is based around users uploading short videos of themselves, like good old Vine used to do, it doesn’t have the emphasis on music and songs like Musical.ly did.

Since both of the apps shared a common mission of capturing the world’s creativity and talent and give them a platform where they can create, share and treasure their precious creations, talent and act.

They decided to combine musical.ly and TikTok and gave it an umbrella term “TikTok”.

Competitive Analysis

Upcoming Competitors

Facebook is developing a singing contest feature to rival musical.ly If thenextweb reports are to be believed, Researcher and code-breaker Jane Manchun Wong found a code that indicates that Facebook may introduce a ‘Talent Show’ feature where users would make use of Facebook’s recently added music partnerships by recording themselves singing and submitting their audition for review amongst other users on the platform.

How to Use The Tiktok App?

• Open Tiktok app
• Tik Tok opens up to a stream of uploaded, popular videos.
• Tap the white + icon at the bottom. This button will allow you to create and post a video on your profile.
• Select a soundtrack for your video. Start shooting.
• Post the video.

Features of Tiktok

• Simple and non-penalizing UI
• Create and edit profile
• Likes are given in the form of Hearts
• Live-Ops – Hashtags, Challenges and Search feature
• Tools for Expression- contains filters and AI effects
• Social Feature- Duets
• Discovering the “Original Sound” posted by user
• Follow and unfollow People
• Explore by hashtags, discover featured stuff
• Watch an endless stream of recommended videos

How to Earn Money Through Music/video Apps?

• In-app purchase : By facilitating the sale of products or services, by allowing users to unlock the premium versions, advanced features in the app you can earn good amount of money. Tiktok uses in-app purchases for raising money.
• Fundraising : You can find angel investors for injecting capital for your startups in exchange for ownership equity or convertible debt. Beijing Bytedance Technology (Tiktok developers) is angling for a $3bn round that could value it at $75bn.
• Advertising : Ads are an effective and easy way to earn revenue from your apps. You can maximize your revenue from in-app advertising like cost per click; cost per install.
• Selling it : By making your app popular, gaining an apparently large number of followers you can make a good worth of your app.

The Cost to Create an App like TikTok

The total cost of developing a music streaming app depends upon the functionality and features you incorporate and the number of complexities involved in the development. Furthermore, the cost also depends on the following factors:

• Hourly software development cost a mobile app development company charges.
• Ongoing support and maintenance.

Or You Can Be Charged for The Following Criterions:

• UI/UX Design
• iOS and Android Native App Development
• Backend Development
• Web Development
• MVP Testing
• Quality Assurance (Polishing and bug fixing)
• Application Maintenance

Related reading : How to Develop Best Alternatives of Banned Chinese Apps?

What defines the combination of Musical.ly and TikTok into one platform?

Musical.ly and TikTok merged to create TikTok, a social video networking app. While Musical.ly focused on lip-syncing and dancing to music, TikTok broadened its scope to short videos with various content. This integration aimed to capture and showcase creativity, talent, and acts on a global platform.