Kids’ music is music composed and performed by or for children. In European influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Kids’ music has historically held both entertainment and educational functions.
Kids’ music is often designed to provide an entertaining means of teaching children about their culture, other cultures, good behaviour, facts and skills. Many are folk songs, but there is a whole genre of educational music that has become increasingly popular.
Recordings for children were intertwined with recorded music for as long as it has existed as a medium. The first words ever recorded (in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison) were in the first verse of "Mary Had A Little Lamb". In 1888, the first recorded discs (called "plates") offered for sale included Mother Goose nursery rhymes. The earliest record catalogues of several seminal figures in the recording industry such as Edison, Berliner, and Victor all contained separate children's sections.
Throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s record companies continued to produce albums for children. Such companies as: Walt Disney, RCA Victor, Decca Records, Capitol Records, Warner Brothers and Columbia Records among others published albums based on popular cartoons or nursery rhymes. Often the albums were read-alongs that contained booklets that children could follow along with.
In the United States, kids’ music continues to be a force in the commercial music industry. At one point in early 2006, the top three albums on the Billboard charts were all kids' music – Disney's “High School Musical” soundtrack, “Kidz Bop 9”, and the “Curious George” film soundtrack. Most albums targeted nationally to children are soundtracks for motion pictures or symbiotic marketing projects involving mass-marketed acts such as “The Wiggles” or “Veggie Tales”.
