Snap
SNAP
recently acquired Voisey, an app that makes it easier for musicians, singers and producers to collaborate, per a
TechCrunch report
. The terms of the deal are yet to be disclosed.
Notably, as indicated by filings in
Companies House
, four co-founders of Voisey as well as the startup’s first two investors resigned as directors of the company as of Oct 21. At the same time, two employees at Snap – Atul Manilal Porwal on the legal team and international controller Amanda Louise Reid – were assigned directorship roles.
Snap is more likely to integrate some or all of Voisey’s features into its flagship app Snapchat to create new music services, while it might choose to run Voisey as a separate app, or a combination of the two.
Voisey Acquisition to Strengthen Music
Snap’s purchase of the service may indicate that Snapchat will soon have new music features identical to Voisey music app.
Voisey is currently available only on iOS and allows users to record short videos using professional sound effects and background tracks provided by the producers much like ByteDance-owned Tik Tok app where posts can also be liked and commented on.
Till September, more than 11 million songs have been recorded on Voisey, and the number of plays within the app exceeded 200 million.
The purchase of the app follows Snap’s multi-year licensing agreements with several major record labels including
Warner Music Group
WMG
, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Kobalt and BMG Music Publishing.
Moreover, last week, Snap paid $70 million for Israel-based startup Voca.ai, which builds AI-based voice assistants for customer support services.
Snap’s Music Video Rivalry With TikTok Intensifies
Snap recently started giving importance to music and the move to acquire a music app like Voisey is meant to counter the growing threat from the popularity of TikTok app and
Facebook’s
FB
Instagram Reels.
Markedly, TikTok has popularized short-form video sharing with posts set to music from a large catalogue. It remains one of the top apps with around
50 million daily active users
(DAUs) in the United States till August. In comparison, Snap reported 249 million DAUs at the end of the third-quarter 2020.
Markedly, in the United States, Snapchat platform reaches 90% of 13-24 year-olds, which is more than Facebook, Instagram and Messenger combined. It also reaches 75% of all 13 to 34-year-olds and more than 4 billion Snaps are created every day on an average.
Snap’s shares have returned 177.2% year to date compared with the Zacks
Internet – Software
industry’s growth of 86.5%.
In October, Snap launched Sounds on Snapchat on iOS, a feature that lets users enhance their Snaps with music from a curated catalog of both emerging and established artists. The music can be added to Snaps either pre or post-capture, then shared without any limitations.
There’s also a Play This Song link that lets Snapchatters listen to the full song on their preferred streaming platform, including Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud.
This differentiates Snapchat’s music feature from TikTok, where a tap on the sound takes users to a page in the app that shows other videos using the same music clip.
Further, the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company partnered with
Spotify
SPOT
to launch Spotify’s first Augmented Reality Portal Lens on Snapchat. Users open the Lens in World view to view art from include Orly Anan, Cristina Martinez, Luisa Salas, Pedro Nekoi and D’Ana Nunez. The Lens will also raise awareness for Spotify’s Latin Hub on its own app.
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the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
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