Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube continue to dominate consumers' hearts and occupy their time, a host of new social media networks have emerged in recent years, and with them comes new opportunitites and exposure for licensed merchandise, branded marketing campaigns and more. This report highlights several fresh social platforms that offer new avenues of consumer engagement.

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‘Musical.ly’

“Musical.ly” is a platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos. With more than 200 million users in over 30 countries, the app sees millions of people every day express themselves through singing, dancing, comedy and lip syncing.

Seventy percent of "Musical.ly" users are women as of June 2017, according to Forbes, and 50 million users are under the age of 21, according to Vice. CNN also reports that, as of November 2016, "Musical.ly" boasts more than 20 million active users in the U.S.

With such a popular platform, which is consistently growing, the video social networking app’s push into licensing makes sense, and in late 2016, the brand appointed Brand Central to develop a consumer products program spanning apparel, accessories, consumer electronics, home décor, toys, health and beauty, back-to-school and more.

Brand Central has already secured several partners for the social platform. In April, Tween Team signed on to create a branded back-to-school collection that consists of notebooks, folders, binders, pencils, pencil cases, stickers, tattoos, DIY bracelets, locker accessories and more.

Other licensees for the “Musical.ly” platform include Jerry Leigh of California for apparel in the U.S.; JCorp for apparel in Canada; Quest USA for tech/consumer electronics in the U.S., Canada and Mexico; American Marketing Enterprises for sleepwear in the U.S.; Jammers Apparel Group for sleepwear in Canada; Iscream for bags, backpacks and home accessories in the U.S. and Canada; and SGCompanies for footwear in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“Musical.ly” teamed up with Apple Music in April to allow its users to stream full-length songs–rather than just 15-second clips–from Apple Music’s catalog directly within the app. The partnership also allows users to save particular songs to their own playlists as well as access “Musical.ly”-branded playlists via the streaming service.

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