Spotify for Kids

When I first heard about Spotify's launch here in the United States, my initial reaction was pretty much... "so what?" It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the promise of unlimited music for free, it was more that I recognized the potential downside for me -- I'm already swimming in music, new and old, kindie and not, and the promise of unlimited music seemed either like a burden or fairly useless. But, I dragged out my invite, signed up, and I've spent a few days exploring the library. Not so much for personal reasons -- I'm still drowning in music, though I can see how it could be useful for research/writing purposes (I'm already using it for a particular project). No, I've been exploring the collection of kids music on Spotify. The verdict? Pretty good, but not perfect. The upside: The collection really is pretty broad. All of Dan Zanes' family albums, all the Laurie Berkner Band, all of They Might Be Giants' family stuff, all of Justin Roberts' family stuff. Imagination Movers, Elizabeth Mitchell, Recess Monkey, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Caspar Babypants, the list goes on. The Many Hands compilation is there, too. The downside: The collection isn't complete, and it can be hard to find albums at times.

Kindie-Chartin': Sirius-XM's Kids Place Live "13 Under 13"

A few weeks back, I attempted to provide some sense of the relative popularity of various family musicians by taking a look at the quasi-objective metric of Facebook fans. The purpose of the review was not to start fights between artists. As I noted in the piece...

1) I know that the number of fans someone has on Facebook has nothing to with quality or talent or anything. Mostly. 2) I'm not trying to start any fights between artists. [See? I wasn't kidding!] 3) As someone who considers how to bring artists in concert to a place that's not New York or DC where concerts happen weekly, the lack of hard data in evaluating an artist's popularity does not help. I can tell you exactly who I would bring in if attendance and cost were no object. But they are.

Nor was I attempting to be exhaustive in my review of artists (as soon as I finished, I came up with another half-dozen artists I could have mentioned). If you're an artist at the level of the folks I mentioned, then perhaps you're doing OK. But Facebook isn't a perfect proxy. (Again, as I noted... "it's a poor proxy for album sales and possibly for concert attendance, and it's a single data source.") So this piece is a second -- and definitely not the last -- way to look at popularity. (Hence my new title for the series - "Kindie-Chartin'.") I decided to look at Sirius-XM's Kids Place Live. The station, likely has the largest audience of any family music radio station, especially since it broadcasts kids music 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (It also has nearly 11,000 fans on its own Facebook page.) As such, songs that do well there are songs that have resonated with a large group of kids on a national basis. Clearly, interest on the part of the DJs there have some influence on what does and doesn't get played, but when you're programming as much live music as KPL does, you need to respect what kids do (and don't) respond to. One way to evaluate airplay would be to search playlists, but that would take forever just to get a "point-in-time" view of whatever artists I (or you) feel like searching. Better (and perhaps easier) to look at their weekly "13 Under 13" broadcasts, which count down thirteen of the most popular songs on the station for the past week. Music director and DJ Robbie Schaefer describes the list as a "subjective snapshot of our live shows for that week," reflecting not only programmed spins and listener requests, but also the more nebulous concept of "momentum," which might take into account responses on Facebook and listener e-mails. In other words -- and this is my phrasing, not Schaefer's -- the list is as much art as science. But, it's put together by DJs who are spending many hours a week interacting with their listeners and who get reminded repeatedly when songs do (or don't) get a reaction from their audience.

Monday Morning Smile: The Grand Rapids LipDub

I posted this on my own Facebook page a couple weeks ago, and I certainly wasn't the only one -- when Roger Ebert calls your video the "Greatest Music Video of All Time," that tends to drive some views. If you haven't seen it, the back story behind the video isn't that important, except to say that Grand Rapids, Michigan felt a little slighted. But instead of cursing or complaining, they channeled their voice into action, leading to the use of helicopters, fireworks, and football teams as part of the "lip dub" to Don McLean's "American Pie." It's pretty awesome. And inspiring. Grand Rapids Lip Dub ("American Pie" by Don McLean) [YouTube]

Monday Morning Smile: The Little Red Plane

The video below titled "The Little Red Plane" uses music only as background for the visuals, which come courtesy of UK animator Charlotte Blacker and her family. It's very gentle and reminds a little bit of the very first Wallace and Gromit short. Which, if you know me, is very high praise indeed. (Hat tip: reader Kelli Ann, who found it here.) Charlotte Blacker - "The Little Red Plane" [YouTube]

Charting Kids' Musicians A Little Differently

There was a discussion on the KinDIY Facebook page the other day about the difficulty of quantifying family musicians album sales. It seems like anecdotally everybody has a story or two about how sales and popularity is increasing, but with the prohibitive cost of Soundscan self-registration (i.e., self-reporting sales at concerts, own websites, etc.) for all but the most successful of artists, concrete data is scarce. And I love myself some concrete data. So I'm going to propose a proxy. This is by no means perfect, it's a poor proxy for album sales and possibly for concert attendance, and it's a single data source. But it does, I believe, put artists in context to each other and to the broader music world around them, and has publicly available and most non-manipulatable data. Hello, Facebook. I know, theoretically all but the very oldest fans of the oldest-skewing kindie rockers shouldn't be even on Facebook. But I think that the number of parents who are on Facebook is a reasonable proxy for how many people might be willing to buy a CD for their family or take them to a show. And while Twitter is also popular, I think folks who are popular on Twitter are folks who are on Twitter a lot, which doesn't correlate as well with broad popularity. So what follows is a list of artists, covering the major stars of the genre, along with some less popular artists, all with the number of Facebook fans they have as of today. But before I begin, some context: 1) I know that the number of fans someone has on Facebook has nothing to with quality or talent or anything. Mostly. 2) I'm not trying to start any fights between artists. 3) As someone who considers how to bring artists in concert to a place that's not New York or DC where concerts happen weekly, the lack of hard data in evaluating an artist's popularity does not help. I can tell you exactly who I would bring in if attendance and cost were no object. But they are. So just this simple review was helpful for me...

Disks I Missed

I get literally hundreds of disks every year. Some are great, some are awful, and a whole bunch of 'em are somewhere in between. Most of these disks in this large, last category have something to recommend them, someone to be recommended to. But for many reasons -- they didn't grab me upon first (or second) listen, too many other reviews at the time, "real life" getting in the way -- I don't review them. I review 50-60 disks a year, but when you get maybe 5 or 6 times that amount, a lot of albums that would appeal to at least some segment of my audience just don't get a review. So consider this list of 27 "disks I missed" a jumping-off point for exploration. I've mentioned many of these artists here in one way or another (videos, radio airplay, free music), so regular readers won't be surprised by many of these names. They're all disks that at one point I thought, "I could definitely review this." (How did I not get around to that Barry Lou Polisar tribute disk?, for example.) They are all disks for which news of a follow-up would definitely intrigue me. And I would guess that most of them have reviews elsewhere on the Internet. So go forth and explore. [Edit: I should note that these disks are essentially from the first 10-11 months of 2010. And I probably missed a few, like Yosi's Super Kids Rock!. So there's probably more out there that will make me slap my forehead when I realize it's not listed here...] The Baby Grands - The Baby Grands II The Boogers - Let's Go! Cake For Dinner - s/t Jim Cosgrove - Swimming in Noodles The Dirty Sock Funtime Band - Sock-A-Delic The Dream Jam Band - Leave It in the Soup Hilary Field & Patrice O'Neill - Cantilena The Flannery Brothers - The New Explorers Club Paul Greaver - Guitar Lullabies Grenadilla - s/t Roy Handy & the Moonshot - (I'm Gonna Be) Your Best Friend Charlie Hope - I'm Me! Hullabaloo - A Mighty Good Day Jeremy Plays Guitar - Use Your Words Todd McHatton - Sundays at the Rocket Park The Monkey Bunch - Power 2 the Little People Alastair Moock - A Cow Says Moock Maria Muldaur - Maria Muldaur's Barnyard Dance - Jug Band Music for Kids The Primate Fiasco - The Wheels on the Bus Ratboy Jr. - Smorgasbord Rhythm Child - Eat a Bowl of Cherries Rock Order of Chords and Keys - Punk Rock One Sock Tim and the Space Cadets - The Greatest Party Ever EP David Tobocman - Lemonade School Yosi - Super Kids Rock! V/A - Music for Little People: Love & Peace V/A - Music for Little People: Pickin' & Grinnin' V/A - We're Not Kidding! A Tribute to Barry Louis Polisar