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Commentary
Marcy Magiera is editorial general manager of Video Business.
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It’s a small world
MARCH 3 | The music industry has found a surprising new sweet spot and, childish as it is, video marketers are also trying to get a piece of it.
VB sister publication Daily Variety reported last week that for the first time in SoundScan’s 15-year history, the three top-selling albums were all music for kids: the soundtrack to Disney Channel original movie High School Musical, Kidz Bop: Vol. 9 and crooner Jack Johnson’s Singalongs and Lullabies For the Film Curious George.
Apparently, parents in their 30s and 40s may cut back their own music purchases—and concertgoing—but are still primed to pick up family-friendly hits—and tickets—for the kids. They’re also less likely to download tunes.
Buena Vista Home Entertainment will try to ride—and extend—High School Musical’s popularity by releasing the film on DVD May 23. The film is somewhat of a “tweener” phenomenon, having been seen by 26 million viewers in its first six airings on the cable channel.
The soundtrack debuted with 6,000 copies sold in its first week, but built to more than 100,000 copies by week seven. To freshen the material for DVD, BVHE will add to the disc a sing-along version and a “Learning the Dance Moves” feature in which choreographer Kenny Ortega teaches young viewers.
Razor & Tie is the distributor of both Kidz Bop: Vol. 9 and We Are the Laurie Berkner Band, a children’s music video collection that has the distinction of being the first DVD sold at Starbucks coffee bars.
Given the kids CD sales numbers, Starbucks looks positively prescient in its choice of Berkner, who has been dubbed “the sippy cup Sheryl Crow” by Time magazine.
Berkner also headlined the first leg of Jamarama Live! Kidfest, which promoters (Creative Artists Agency among them) call the first-ever national children’s music festival tour. Jamarama will be released on DVD early in the summer through Goldhil Entertainment. Other acts on the Jamarama tour include Dan Zanes, formerly of the Del Fuegos.
Goldhil promotions director Chris Donaldson says he believes the kids music trend is a natural outgrowth of the success of educational video products for kids, particularly the Baby Einstein franchise. Adults can share music they appreciate with their children as an alternative to TV.
Apparently, it’s working. It took Donaldson numerous trips to Starbucks before he was able to score his own copy of Berkner’s DVD, because, he reports, the title was always sold out.
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