Moonbug Entertainment, the award-winning global entertainment company behind some of the world’s most popular kids’ titles and Universal Music Group (UMG), the world leader in music-based entertainment, today announced an exclusive global partnership. Under the terms of the agreement, UMG will provide worldwide distribution, publishing and licensing for the Moonbug Music label and its hugely popular kids and family music catalogs, including CoComelon, Little Baby Bum & Blippi, which currently generate more than 150 million monthly streams across Moonbug brands.

Music is an essential tool in early childhood development, helping children learn and grow through repetitive rhymes and rhythms. The multi-year partnership will see the companies work closely together to reach new audiences globally, explore new opportunities to improve the accessibility of kids music for parents as well as infants, toddlers and other key learning phases through optimization of voice-activated technology and in-home devices, playlisting and other innovations. UMG will also work closely with Moonbug to maximize the impact of its catalog through sync and licensing for its hugely popular IP, through Universal Music Publishing (UMPG) worldwide.

Over the past three years, Moonbug Entertainment Ltd. has built an unmatched global family audience through its hugely popular shows like CoComelon and Little Baby Bum. These shows promote healthy values (like compassion, empathy and resilience), as well as fostering positive narratives (like eating vegetables and preparing for bed), as well as singing-along to playful nursery rhymes that help them learn letters, numbers, animal sounds, colors and more. These educational and behavioural-themed songs have struck a chord with parents and children alike across the world. Moonbug currently has two of the top 20 most-watched YouTube videos in history. Its ‘Bath Song’ from CoComelon has been viewed more than 4.4 billion times.

With this exclusive agreement, UMG will leverage its world-leading expertise in publishing, distribution and its unparalleled global network of 300+ partners and DSPs to bring Moonbug’s library of great audio entertainment to families all over the world, reaffirming UMG’s position as the global market-leader for Kids and Family music of all ages, supported by UMG’s operations worldwide.

Kids music consumption has increased dramatically across streaming services in the past two years, particularly in the early childhood phases (1-5 years old). The rapid adoption of voice-enabled devices globally in the home has meant that children are engaging with music at a younger age than ever before. As families spent more time in the home due to the pandemic, new behaviours were established, with children increasingly able to access music utilising in-home technology via premium streaming subscription services.

“We could not be more thrilled to partner with a respected and influential industry powerhouse like Universal Music Group to expand the possibilities of our music content,” said René Rechtman, co-founder and CEO of Moonbug Entertainment. “Music plays a critical role not only in our company’s growth strategy but also in childhood development. We look forward to the possibilities for our already popular nursery rhymes and songs, and the new music that we’ll produce together.”

Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Group said, “We are delighted to partner with Moonbug Entertainment, reinforcing UMG’s position as the leading distributor and publisher of kids music globally. We have seen tremendous growth in the kids and family segment in recent years, thanks to advances in streaming and voice-technology. We look forward to working with Rene and the talented Moonbug team to amplify the reach of their catalog to families around the world, and to further improve the accessibility of music for children of all ages.”

Music has a powerful, transformative and unifying effect on people and has been shown to contribute to better memory and cognitive skills. This is because listening to, and playing music, produce changes in the brain and both have shown to release a healthy amounts of endorphins, which increases happiness. Neurologists who have studied brain development have said that music can also have long-lasting benefits for babies. Research from the Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences found that after babies listen to music, their auditory and prefrontal cortexes look different. These are the regions of the brains in charge of processing both music and speech, and when young children interact with others, the positive effects of listening to music have been seen to extend to personality traits, like being helpful and cooperative.