Billboard’s Kid Music Deep Dive – How to Crack the Kids’ Music Market

The Adults In The Room: A Conversation About The Future Of The Kids’ Music Business

Highlights:

Karen Lieberman (VP Sales & Digital for Disney Music Group) & Jonathan Linden (Co-President of Round Room Live) discuss the state of the children’s music business from both the recorded and live sectors and which data they find most useful; the tricks to engaging, rather than annoying, the parents who are also listening to their music and attending their shows; and their strategies for navigating a business landscape suddenly reshaped by the pandemic.

How To Write A Hit That Kids Will Love — And Adults Won’t Ever Forget

Highlights:

Frozen’s Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez give tips on writing songs that have the best chance of lasting at least a century.
The importance of melody: Disney songs above all feature sweeping melodies — “something people can bring home with them, that can become part of their lives,” says Robert.
Think broadly: “Some of the songs that live the longest give us really universal messages — they provide almost like a sermon on the world, tapping into something very spiritual and true about human existence,” says Kristen.
Get in touch with your inner child: During the writing process, “we do a lot of play,” says Robert. “It’s almost like we’re on a playdate, but with a piano there, playing the parts ourselves.”
But write for all ages: “Never ever do we sit down and say, ‘Let’s write a kids’ song today,’” says Kristen. “We’re writing as seriously as we would for the Metropolitan Opera. We want to write stories that give something to the world.”

Why Kids’ Music Sales and Streaming Growth Appears To Be Declining (It’s Not)

Highlights:

In April, Billboard and Nielsen Music/MRC Data streamlined the methodology they use to count on-demand audio streams to match the data verification parameters applied to on-demand video streams. As a result of this revision, the children’s music genre lost over half of its market share.
What would have been a 1.39% share of the U.S. market so far this year is now 0.62% for that period, according to this new methodology. Within that total, on-demand streaming of children’s music would have registered a 1.33% market share for that same period — compared with 0.57% for the entirety of 2016.
Under Billboard’s new video streaming rules, the revised market share for first-quarter 2020 is 0.47%.

The Lion King’s Share: No Label Comes Close to Disney In Streaming and Album Sales

Highlights:

In 2019, Disney claimed 85 of the top 200 streamed songs. In market share, Disney has been the top label by far for at least the last five years. In 2020 so far, it accounts for 52.63% of the children’s music market. Disney also has four of the top four and 18 of the top 20 slots among the top 25 children’s albums since 1992, the first full year that Nielsen tracked point-of-sale purchases.

Heads of The Class: Disney, Concord and The Orchard Dominate the Genre

Highlights:

The O.G. of children’s entertainment and the distributors of the Kidz Bop and “Baby Shark” musical franchises, respectively, accounted for over 75% of the market in the first quarter of 2020

How This App Is Changing Music Discovery for Families

Highlights:

Alex Norström (Spotify Chief Premium Business Officer) & Jenny Frisk (Music Programming Lead, Kids & Family) on why Spotify Kids’ content is curated by people instead of algorithms, and why it’s becoming widely available at a time when many parents could use it.
With a library of roughly 8,000 kid-appropriate tracks and stories, Spotify Kids aims to give parents peace of mind while introducing the platform to a whole new generation of listeners.

How Raffi Became the All-Time Kids’ Music Icon — Without Compromising

Highlights:

Raffi has notched 10 albums on Billboard’s Kid Albums chart list, one of only 12 artists to do so — and, unlike commercial juggernaut contemporaries like Veggie Tales and Kidz Bop Kidz, he did so while remaining independent and refusing to ever market to children.
In this interview, he discusses why he never gave in to marketing to children, his thoughts on “Baby Shark,” and why this is an oddly good time to put out kids’ music.

Disney’s Newest Kids’ Music Powerhouse

Highlights:

Steven Vincent (Disney Channel’s VP of Music and Soundtracks) & Stacy Satz (DMG Director of Marketing) on how each musical franchise has its own voice, but the songs need to resonate with current trends. It’s also key to determine whether or not there will be songs released in advance, and which ones will be the new priority tracks after those.
DMG utilizes all the streaming services, but a primary outlet is YouTube’s Disney Music Vevo channel, which DMG creates special playlists for, as well as for Spotify.

Meet Jam Jr. — Columbia’s Big Bid for The Kids’ Music Market

Highlights:

Ryan Ruden (Head of Touring & Events at Columbia Records) on how Jam Jr. was born from the idea that kids are increasingly using voice-activation devices to request their favorite songs, with the goal of harnessing the power of these tech-savvy kids to create a music brand that both they and their parents could get into.
Three key factors set it apart: Its influencer-artists, with their built-in followings and potential for peer-to-peer marketing; its access to Columbia’s front-line artists and to Sony/ATV’s catalog; and the educational component released with each cover.

How One Club Owner Is Teaching Toddlers to Rock

Highlights:

Promoter and Brooklyn Bowl co-owner Peter Shapiro on how he built a national network of family-friendly Rock and Roll Playhouses.
“You’d like to take your kid to a tribute to the Beatles or Marley or Talking Heads. And you just sing it kid-friendly. It’s not that hard,” Shapiro says. “The artists are psyched to do it, the venues are psyched to do it, the parents are psyched about it, so it’s a good ecosystem.”
As COVID-19 quarantines took hold, Shapiro quickly shifted the Playhouse performances to Facebook live streams. The first 20 Facebook streams drew about 20,000 views each, and Rock and Roll Playhouse now broadcasts seven days a week, giving kids (and parents) a chance to cut loose at 3:00 every weekday afternoon.

How Goofy Music Videos Are Multiplying Kids’ Algebra Skills

Highlights:

Dr. Lana Israel (Rhodes scholar, Memory expert and Creator of Muzology) & Bob Doyle (Garth Brooks’ manager) discuss Muzology, an education program used for thousands of students in all 50 states.
Muzology enlisted its stable of talent to put together a rare non-math song addressing the COVID-19 crisis. Four songwriters created “All Over the Map (The Coronavirus Song)” through FaceTime; then singers, guitarists (including Beyoncé’s bassist, Divinity Roxx) and their families shot footage of themselves on iPhones for the video.

Kids’ Music Merch: Small Sizes, Big Sales

Highlights:

Jonathan Linden (Co-President of Round Room Live) & Christine Buckley (VP of Brand Management for Universal Music Group’s Bravado) on the booming market for kids’ music merchandise.
The kids merchandise field has evolved rapidly in recent years as content platforms have shifted from movies and television to online. Along with merchandise tied to children franchises, the other main sector of the field is children-sized clothing branded with classic artists.
“There’s a lot of similarities between selling music and sports merch. It’s cross-generational, where the music, logo and reverence is handed down. Like a Yankee fan’s kids and grandkids will also be Yankee fans, it’s the same with the Rolling Stones.”

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About the Author

Dr. Jerry Doby Editor-in-Chief of The Hype Magazine, Media and SEO Consultant, Journalist, Ph.D. and retired combat vet. 2023 recipient of The President's Lifetime Achievement Award. Partner at THM Media Group. Member of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the United States Press Agency and ForbesBLK.