On November 9, 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musical.ly Inc had been sold to Bytedance Technology Co., which operates the program Toutiao, for as much as US$1 billion.[12] However, Recode estimated that the sale would be for around US$800 million. On August 2, 2018, Bytedance consolidated the user accounts of Musical.ly and TikTok, merging the two apps into one and keeping the title TikTok.