Ryan Shank breaks down why ByteDance paid $1 billion for Musical.ly: the app's addictive habit loop keeps teens scrolling, and that attention is gold for brands that can't reach them on TV anymore. Jacob Sartorius and Justin Bieber launched from the platform straight to arena tours.
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Second video of the day. I have to talk about something really quick, and I just want to clickbait this, and I'm just kind of testing something. But basically, Musical.ly got acquired for like a billion dollars. We're going to talk about it for like one second, short little video. I know everyone who subscribes is going to get that double notification. You guys, this is a present. You haven't got a notification all like week pretty much, so we're going to give you a second one. Talk about Musical.ly, okay? It's an app, a ton of people are using it, ton of teenagers are using it, and basically what they're doing is they're going in there and they're like lip syncing or whatever, doing karaoke. They're gaining an audience. Look, at the end of the day, people who are like old and like not teenagers, which is pretty much me, but I have like a teenager mind, but not in a weird, weird way by the way. I just try to follow the trends, right? You can sort of see what people are using, why people are using it. People are obsessed with like themselves and they're obsessed. There was actually an article that came out today about how Sean Parker saying that like Facebook's pretty much the devil. And his point though is that people are just like craving the likes and then they compare themselves to other people. And that's like literally what Musical.ly is doing. And I'm not saying it in a bad way. Or anything like that, but it's basically, it's addictive, right? So there's books called Hooked, which basically is like the habit loop and things like that where people are like going back into these apps and things like that. And basically what Musical.ly does is like it allows you to one, look at yourself and record a video. People love themselves, let's be honest. Selfies are like in now. It's like not weird to take a selfie in public, whereas it used to be kind of weird. Like I was just in Miami a few weeks ago and like everyone is literally taking selfies. Even in clubs now, people are just like doing it and it's like totally normal. It's like a thing, okay? So anyway, this app allows you to do that. It allows you to then present it to your people and really get that social validation. These kids are doing it and it is really engaging, engaging, engaging. That is why I think obviously the attention of this demographic is super important for brands and things like that. It is like how do we get their attention? How do we get to them? We are not getting to them on TV. We are not getting to them through these other traditional methods. We have to go to the apps. We have to go to the things that these guys are on. By the way, YouTube is making a massive come up right now too. It is like you see people that are just super, super addicted to YouTube. I guarantee you talk to anyone from like 8 to 10, 8 from let's just say 8 to like 15, 16 years old, that's what they're doing. They're in like Musical.ly and kind of apps like that, and then they're also just following YouTube. Me and one of my advisors, Adam Lieberman, we have like a kind of like running bet or disagreement because I say that the people who are gaining these massive and loyal audiences on YouTube who basically they started out on the apps, like on Vine, on Musical.ly, right? Even there's kids right now, this kid Jacob Sartorius, he basically started off on musically, and now he's like a massive like star. He's doing like world, uh, you know, arena tours and things like that. And it's like kind of back in the day how Bieber got started, got founded like on YouTube. Um, but the point is like, you look, there's so many people engaging with these apps. This is where the attention is. People are gonna go and they're gonna buy the attention, right? These guys have, you know, the attention of this certain demographic and that daily engagements, things like that. Um, so that's valuable to them. And the reason they're getting it which kind of goes back to what I was just talking about, is because look, people are using these apps because they want that validation from their friends, plus it's fun, plus it's like random and it's not like boring. Plus, you know, Snap, where it's like, you know, it's kind of like, hey, I gotta push it out to all my friends. Now if it's public, then like my mom is seeing it, and that's kind of, not like my mom, but it's like their mom is seeing it. It's kind of like weird, whereas Musical.ly, you know, you can actually like become something and get better, and like you can do really creative things, almost like a Vine used to be able to do, but longer, plus music's involved, and it's just like really cool. Anyway, they got bought for $1 billion. I just wanted to create or make a quick video because it's super relevant right now. Hit that title and just see if I can clickbait people, but it's not even clickbait. I'm just talking about the acquisition, okay? Leave me alone. I hope you guys have a good Friday. Peace.
