Today’s the day for TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s appearance at a US congressional hearing. Ahead of that, the Washington Post published a poll. The post Washington Post poll finds 41% of Americans support a TikTok ban appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has received a lot of criticism over the last year for the kind of content that its younger users can be exposed to by its algorithm. The post TikTok is adding a new feed dedicated to science and technology appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Another day, another reason for TikTok’s policy and public relations teams to open their inboxes and grimace. The post Charities want TikTok to do more to protect children’s wellbeing appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

‘Beyond The Instrument’ is Sony’s music education initiative to get equipment into the hands of young people. The post Sony Music expands ‘Beyond The Instrument’ initiative to the UK appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok has been facing increasing pressure in the US over issues including privacy and children’s safety. Its CEO will appear at a hearing. The post TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to appear before US House in March appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Roblox is one of the publicly-listed tech companies that has been enduring a rocky time on the markets in recent times. The post Roblox reports strong December metrics with 61.5m daily users appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

It’s an almighty double-OOF for one of the biggest brands in children’s entertainment. The post Epic Games to pay $520m in two FTC settlements over Fortnite appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

TikTok is ending 2022 with more legal headaches in the US: two lawsuits filed by Indiana’s attorney general against the company, focusing on user data and children’s safety. The post Indiana’s attorney general files two lawsuits against TikTok appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

New research from KidsNoBest, which surveys around one million children a year on their media and digital habits, reveals the risks. The post Branded worlds may bring risks as well as rewards for Roblox appeared first on Music Ally. Source: Music ally

Instagram was making a version of its app for children aged under 13. Now it’s not – at least not for the moment. “We believe building Instagram Kids is the right thing to do, but we’re pausing the work,” wrote Instagram boss Adam Mosseri in a blog post yesterday. “This will give us time to work with […]

Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok, and like other apps that are popular with young people in China, it’s facing pressure to limit the time they spend on its service. Cue what Douyin described in a blog post as “the most stringent youth protection measures in the history of the platform” – a ‘youth mode’ for people […]

AI music startup Popgun launched its Splash music-making app on gaming platform Roblox in May, and saw it used by more than one million players in its first 20 days. How’s it going now? Still strong. “Wow, over 21M players have now made music with Splash!” tweeted Popgun boss Stephen Phillips this weekend. “55K kids performed on stage for the first […]

YouTube is keen to ensure that underage viewers aren’t watching videos that are inappropriate. It’s announced plans to “build on our approach of using machine learning to detect content for review, by developing and adapting our technology to help us automatically apply age-restrictions”. In other words, YouTube’s AI will be rating videos, although uploaders will be able […]

Warner Music Group’s Arts Music division has been steadily growing its catalogue of kids and family music, with partners including Sesame Workshop, Mattel and Build-a-Bear Workshop. Its latest deal is with a popular YouTube children’s music brand, Super Simple Songs. Well, with its parent company Skyship Entertainment anyway, which will be making the Super Simple Songs […]

Last month, Music Ally took part in the BPI and ERA’s New Kids on the Block online event, looking at children’s digital habits and what they mean for music. Research company Kids Insights produced a report for the event too, which has been published today. We contributed a section on some of the interesting stories […]

Lead: we report back on our recent New Kids On The Block: Insight Into A New Generation online conference that we ran in conjunction with UK trade bodies the BPI and ERA, drawing out the 10 key lessons from the different panels and presentations. These include: children are much more active (and increasingly so) than previously presumed; […]

“Who in the room knows Roblox?” asked WMG’s chief innovation officer for recorded music Scott Cohen at the NY:LON Connect conference in January. Only a few people put their hands up in response. “It’s a gaming platform for kids, and they not only play games, they create their own games and play those games with […]

People in the music business (us included) bang on about Fortnite a lot, but we think Roblox is another gaming platform that should be less under the radar for our industry. A new report by children’s media research firm Dubit offers some stats that might help. “Half of all children aged 9-12 in the USA […]

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have been hit by a ban in India as part of a wider crackdown on apps of Chinese origin. But there may be trouble brewing for the companies in the US, too, due both to the political jockeying around hardball trade negotiations between the US and China, and specific […]

Sit down for this shocker: children spend quite a lot of time on YouTube and TikTok! Who knew? Next thing, someone will be telling us that they quite like Fortnite too. But no snark: a company called Qustodio, whose product is a parental control app, has been digging into its data to quantify exactly how […]

Andy Day is a popular children’s TV presenter in the UK on TV channel CBeebies, but he’s also been building a music career as the frontman of Andy and the Odd Socks. The band’s new album comes out today (22 May) through Sony Music’s children’s entertainment label Magic Star, and there’s an inventive marketing campaign around […]

We’ve written regularly about Australian AI-music startup Popgun, including its belief that AI could be the secret sauce for a service “where teenagers come together to make music for each other… the ‘pop stars on training wheels’ place where they make music for each other, release it and watch each other pretend to be pop […]

Nick Cope was lead singer in British indie band The Candyskins, who were Oxford contemporaries of (if not as big as) Supergrass back in the 1990s. They broke up in 1998, and although they’ve reunited for a few one-off concerts since, there’s also an interesting postscript to their story in the new career of frontman […]

One of the factors in YouTube’s viewing increase (see story higher up this bulletin) is the fact that schools are closed in many countries, and children are getting (even) more time on screens. At the younger end of the age range, that’s having a notable impact on the figures for children’s music channels. Witness the latest […]

Apptopia is one of a cluster of app analytics firms (see also: App Annie, Sensor Tower) mining the app stores for data on the size and growth of the apps market. Its latest report is co-published with a customer engagement firm called Braze, and focuses on the video streaming world. The part that caught our […]

Just as many parents are teachers now, so when it comes to the world of technology and digital services “everyone is a kids and family brand now”. That’s the tagline for a report by kid-tech firm SuperAwesome, which explores what the coronavirus pandemic (and the stay-at-home measures being deployed to battle it) mean for businesses. […]

With parents across the world still getting to grips with home-schooling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and associated social-distancing measures, digital services aimed at children are having a big moment in the spotlight. Spotify had already launched its Spotify Kids app in a range of countries, but yesterday it expanded to the world’s biggest music […]

Spotify now has 248 million monthly active users, but how many of them are children? We don’t know, and neither does Spotify: its minimum age varies across the world, but the lowest is 13 years old with parent or guardian consent. Anecdotally, though, plenty of parents have ignored this stipulation and added under-13s to their […]

Last week, it was reported that Spotify will test a price increase for its family-plan subscription in Scandinavia. This morning, the company is announcing that it is launching an “upgraded” version of the plan globally, although the press release sent out by Spotify made it clear in the very first paragraph that this is “for […]