“We favor quality over quantity” – laparenthese-gourmande

Gabb Music is a music streaming service specifically developed for kids and families with a Gabb Wireless phone – and the company is listening to its younger audience as the platform continues to grow.

“Having the opportunity to build something from the ground up for kids was very appealing to me,” said Kerri Fox-Metoyer, head of entertainment at Gabb Wireless. Billboard family. “If you look at the market, most other music services were built for adults and then redesigned for kids, but we built everything from the ground up for kids.”

More from Billboard

On November 14, Billboard introduced the first Top Gabb Music Songs chart, a monthly ranking provided by Gabb Wireless that tracks on-demand streams through the telco’s Gabb Music platform, which features an extensive catalog of songs curated by the Gabb team that include only songs for children and adolescents. appropriate content. Gabb Music streams are not currently considered in any other Billboard graphics.

Based on October 2024 data, Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” topped the inaugural Top Gabb Music Songs chart as the most played song on Gabb Wireless phones. The ranking lists the 25 most listened to songs of the month on Gabb phones.

Fox-Metoyer spoke with Billboard family from Gabb Music’s Nashville base ahead of the launch of the Top Gabb Music Songs chart, in a conversation about the creation of the streaming service and how it delivers a catalog of songs tailored to young listeners and their families, with a music suitable for all ages and settings.

Gabb Wireless has been around since 2018, and its first products – mobile phones marketed as child-safe, without internet access, and with only kid-centric features – were available nationwide in September 2019. Music streaming was the most requested feature by parents. of children owning Gabb phones, says Fox-Metoyer, who joined the company in 2020 and has held previous roles at companies involving digital music (Liquid Audio) and the family music space (Disney, Sony) .

After researching streaming partner options and realizing nothing really fit the mission the company had in mind, the Gabb team decided to create their own platform.

Gabb Music

“The streaming industry in general is about quantity, and we were looking for quality in our service for kids,” says Fox-Metoyer.

Thus was born Gabb Music, which first launched in 2022 as a DMCA-compliant radio service, with the intention of adding the now available on-demand service Gabb Music+ . Licensed by all three major labels – Universal, Sony and Warner – Gabb Music’s ad-free streaming platform offers songs from all genres and musical eras, not just songs found in the kids category (an idea false current). But its song catalog is carefully filtered to meet the company’s vision.

Songs are usually filtered based on explicit language tags when it comes to streaming, but Gabb took a closer look at whether the songs were truly tailored to the specific service they had developed for kids.

“When you remove songs that have explicit lyrics, you’re left with a vast catalog of music, some of which still isn’t suitable for our age group. We have children as young as 6 years old, and our children go up to 16, 17 years old. It’s a very wide range,” shares Fox-Metoyer, adding that “the core” of Gabb Music listeners are between 8 and 12 years old. -age range of 12 years.

“So we had to look at that and ask ourselves, just because this song doesn’t have the F-word, or other (explicit) words, is it age appropriate? That’s when we started developing our standards and guidelines. We said as a company this is what we are going to allow and not allow,” she says.

Gabb Music

So, what does Gabb Music allow and not allow on its platform?

“We favor quality over quantity,” she explains. “We look at every piece of music. When we filter, we don’t just filter words. We also look at the artist name, song name, album name, and album art.

“As a parent, you can understand that,” she says Billboard family from Gabb’s concept of omitting songs that reference topics such as violence, drug use, self-harm, and bullying, or “things that may not have explicit lyrics, but which are simply not age-appropriate for your children. I think that’s really our differentiator. Insinuations and adult topics that through proprietary filtering we remove these songs from the service. We don’t edit it, it just doesn’t appear on our service. I think that’s what parents like.

She explains that parents can take a Gabb phone out of the box, activate it, and give it to their child without navigating various (and sometimes complicated) parental control settings, or “worrying about what they’re listening to, watching or see.” The phone itself has built-in filtering for its text and video messages, and has no internet browser or social media access – just its own app store, with Gabb-approved options that parents can browse and choose to add for their child, if they wish. I would like. Plus, it’s easy for parents to send messages via phone or report content in the Gabb Music app, with comments.

Beyond the fact that the phone itself is designed as a child-safe device, part of what differentiates its streaming platform from other services is the Gabb product’s built-in audience of young listeners: “They help us to build it,” she said.

The Gabb team is able to draw insights from Gabb Music’s list of most played songs, as well as direct feedback the company receives from families with young music lovers, to continue optimizing the platform to meet the best meets the needs of its audience.

“Our programming mission is based on three pillars: education, entertainment and discovery,” explains Fox-Metoyer. “All the programming we do, we look at it from that angle. We want kids to learn about music, we obviously want them to be entertained, and we want to help them discover what their musical tastes are.

The Gabb phone and its music streaming service are an alternative option for families who want to “adopt technology in stages,” she says. “These kids, sometimes it’s their first experience operating their own music streaming account, so we have to educate them on how to create a playlist, what does skip mean, what does repeat mean, what does shuffle mean? »

She also discusses the trend of children who don’t to want be connected to a device, but want to listen to music throughout their daily activities, such as getting ready in the morning, spending time with friends, playing outside, cooking with their parents, studying and relaxing: “There are this whole new movement about kids kind of expressing themselves, almost taking the opposite of excessive screen time, and (saying), “No, I’m not going to be on social media. I’m not going to be attached to my phone. It’s really cool to see kids almost reclaiming their youth.

Gabb Music’s diverse catalog contains playlists tailored to children’s day, as well as their mood. Sleep and study playlists are popular, as is sad music: “One of them is popular and interesting – it was a request from a family – they wanted sadder music, just simple music softer. »

Gabb Music is also developing app offerings for its child listeners that combine music streaming and music education, such as playlists highlighting an instrument or demonstrating what BPM is.

Of course, while kids and teens streaming through Gabb may discover music that’s new to them, they’re also still “drawn to the hits,” she says. “They love Benson Boone, they love Taylor Swift, they love Imagine Dragons.”

What happens if someone searches for a popular song that doesn’t meet Gabb Music’s guidelines and therefore can’t be found on the app? They receive alternative suggestions and the opportunity to discover more music they might like, instead of hitting a roadblock.

“We try to present songs that we TO DO have (of the artist). We try to respond positively. Here are 10 other songs we have,” she says, adding later in our conversation: “We’re adding new music every day. »

Looking ahead, Gabb Music hopes to become a go-to music platform not only for families at home, but also a useful option for child-centered community events: “We have received requests not only from teachers and schools, but also youth groups. leaders, a scout group… Not only for musical education, but also: “I play music for my children during our events and I struggle to create a playlist suitable for these events”, says- She. “We are thinking about how to solve these problems in 2025.”

Coming soon for Gabb is its fun CEO for the Day program, just announced for December 3, when a 9-year-old will take over at Gabb Wireless headquarters in Lehi, Utah. This opportunity will allow him to attend meetings and brainstorming sessions with executives, present his own marketing ideas and much more. Gabb Music listeners can celebrate this special day with a playlist called “Boss Beats,” full of inspiring and empowering songs.

The best of billboard