We reported last week on Snapchat parent company Snap’s plans to lay off around 20% of its employees. More details have since emerged of how the cuts affect specific teams within Snap’s empire.
In a memo to staff, CEO Evan Spiegel noted that the company had “started the process of winding down the standalone applications Zenly and Voisey”. The latter is what’s relevant to Music Ally: it’s the music-focused short-video app that Snap acquired in November 2020. The app had made its name as a way for people to sing or rap over a library of beats and loops to create original tracks.
Note the ‘standalone application’ element of the shutdown: Voisey’s tech (and perhaps team) may well continue to play a role in the main Snapchat app in the future.
Meanwhile, Snap’s experiments in web3 are also taking a hit from the cutbacks, with the team responsible having also been ‘sunsetted’. One of its members revealed the news on Twitter, with Bloomberg securing official confirmation and a statement from Snap that “early explorations in the web3 space represent a project that doesn’t directly contribute to our priority and continued investment in AR”.
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