Why Spotify Should Buy Musical.ly Now

Apple Music and Spotify are fighting a ongoing battle for streaming music superiority. Apple Music is positioning itself as the home of big, exclusive releases. With ongoing rumors of Apple buying Jay-Z’s Tidal, it looks like Apple will secure many of the most popular large artists in world, and more importantly, their exclusive releases and hype around them. 2016 has made the case for the power of exclusive releases. Tidal wasn’t even relevant from its release up until it started dropping exclusive albums from some of the largest names in the music world (Kanye West, Rihanna). Now, Tidal continues to be relevant and will fetch quite a large price tag if Apple were to acquire it at this point.

Spotify could, at this point, try to make bids for artists to come drop exclusive content with them. They are in a very similar position to Apple for music streaming, but have focused most of their efforts up to this point, on Playlists. Exclusive content would turn into a massive bidding war between Apple, Tidal and Spotify. All three have seen the power, and attention these releases give and Apple and Tidal would not want to give them up.

Musical.ly should be where the focus is next. If you don’t know who Musical.ly is this is how they explain themselves:

musical.ly is a video social network for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. Every day, millions of people use musical.ly as an outlet to express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy, and lip-syncing. The app celebrates creativity with videos that are shared across the musical.ly community. With over 100 million users, musical.ly has hit #1 in the iOS app store for free apps in 20 countries — including the United States. In June of 2016, musical.ly released its breakout livestreaming platform live.ly, which provides the musical.ly community with a broader canvas on which they can express themselves. Immediately following its official launch, live.ly began trending and hit the number one spot in 8 countries in the iOS app store.

Although Musical.ly is still very young in it’s life cycle it has found a lot of attention and a lot of attention for a group that companies pay a lot for: 10–16. While Snapchat is starting to grow up, Muscial.ly has began to move into the space that Snapchat has left behind. Millions of videos are posted each day, most with some music inspired content. Many Musical.ly influencers are already seeing it as a way to make money and have become celebrities in their own right.

Spotify could easily capitalize on this market, linking themselves with Musical.ly would give content creators more freedom to use the songs they want, find new music to create to, and the ability to expand their influence across more people. For Spotify, it gives them another tool in the fight against Apple, something Apple cannot copy easily, and creates brand loyalty with the youth who use this app. It is important for Spotify to connect with its audience in a way that is unique. Exclusive releases do this for Apple, it creates a brand that is not just about the music being streamed.

Spotify And Musical.ly are a great match. They both can benefit off of one another, content creators get more tools, music listeners can have another way to find more music and Spotify can diversify itself against Apple.