Musical.ly’s streaming app Live.ly is no more

Yup, Musical.ly has decided to shut down Live.ly’s standalone mobile app in order to consolidate the service into the main Musical.ly app. As a live streaming app, Live.ly managed to last for a couple of years, but soon enough, the brand will be removed from Google Play and from the App Store. 

But wait -- what will happen to existing users of the Live.ly streaming app? For one, they will no longer be able to go live using Live.ly -- instead, they will get a message that will inform them that the live streaming functionality has been merged with the interface of Musical.ly’s main app. The merging has also been confirmed by way of Live.ly’s App Store update text.

It was back in May of 2016 when the Live.ly streaming app first made its debut. It basically served as a means for current users of Musical.ly to go live streaming, with the streams themselves made easily accessible through the Musical.ly app. While users go about with their live streaming, not only would they get a real time count of the people viewing their streams, they would also be able to see animated heart graphics flying all over the screen whenever other people liked their streams. On top of all that, viewers could also start an online chat with the person doing the live streaming, and even live conversations.

But alas, it appears that Live.ly’s time has come. Not surprisingly, some users were not too happy with the news. Moreover, there appears to have been no advance notice with regards to the discontinuation of the mobile app. And it does not help that for some who have already started exploring live streaming on the Musical.ly app, the feature does not seem to be working properly. Interestingly, a number of users have reported no problems with their respective transition, while other are complaining that the number of viewers, likes, and comments are not showing as expected.

These issues aside, Musical.ly is looking to further fine tune and even improve upon its live streaming service, even though it can no longer rely on the Live.ly standalone streaming app. Besides, it looks like most of its live streaming viewership was already happening on Musical.ly’s main app, so merging the formerly separate services actually makes some sense. Musical.ly’s brand itself has gone through some changes lately. Some may remember that back in December of last year, the company officially became part of Chinese media giant Bytedance.