MEDIA; The Top-Selling Tunes on Billboard, Sung by Children for Children - New York Times
Robert Levine, March 6, 2006

    The New York Times considered the growing market of children’s music important enough to report about. The news isn’t exactly news: music for kids, especially music recorded by other kids, is going to sell. Following the success of the soundtrack for High School Musical, which was the top album for 2006, other recording companies are seeing an opening for more albums for kids. The article highlights Kidz Bop, a series of albums containing covers of famous pop songs sung by children ages 8-12 with an “intentionally imperfect style.” The idea is that kids listening will want to sing along and can more easily imagine themselves as the rock star when the singers on the album aren’t easily identifiable and the vocals are less impressive. These albums, with the eleventh released this year plus a number of holiday and special edition releases, are part of the recent resurgence in children’s music.
    A quick check on Amazon.com reveals some interesting consumer reviews. Most of the reviews actually hate these CDs, but of course the reviewers are adults. They say Kidz Bop is ruining perfectly good and generally appropriate popular songs, and that some of the songs they’re picking are so far from appropriate that even when they’re edited it’s strange to hear such young kids singing them. But there are over thirty hits when searching with the terms “Kidz Bop” under Music on Amazon, so they must be doing something right.
    When the soundtrack for “High School Musical” was number one on the Billboard chart, spots two and three were also albums made for children. As most of the other music genres are noticing a decline in CD sales, children’s music is stable if not increasing. Recording labels are starting to take an interest in audiences too young to pirate their music. Razor and Tie, the independent label responsible for Kidz Bop, does most of their advertising directly television, and so far it’s been working well. They’re in direct competition with Disney, which has access to both the Disney Channel and Radio Disney to promote its music. At the time of the article, Disney was coming out with Devo 2.0 on its new label Disney Sound, described as “still safe, but it’s got a little bit of an edge,” by a marketing vice president at Walt Disney Records.