Carolina and children’s music: an expanding market
His official YouTube channel has approx 1.5 billion total views. Yes, you read that right: one billion five hundred million. Members number over 1.15 million. The most popular video, that of “Katalicammello”, has 120 million views alone. On TikTok, the videos in which he performs the choreography of the songs he sings boast 1.1 million likes. On Spotify the four albums published between 2019 and this year – in order: “Carolina & Topo Tip: dance with us!”, “Carolina & Topo Tip – Summer baby dance”, “Carolina & Topo Tip: a fabulous Christmas ” and the latest “Christmas Dance”, just released by Sony Music –
they totaled 115 million listeners overall. That of Carolina, as her very young fans call Carolina Benvenga, a 34-year-old Roman youtuber, singer and presenter, is a phenomenon that seems to have no precedent in Italy.
A market void and prejudices
Icon for children, who compulsively listen to his songs and watch his YouTube videos on loop, Carolina has gone to fill a void in the Italian panorama. The association with phenomena such as Me Contro Te or Ninna e Matti would come naturally, but including her in that vein is a mistake: she is not a YouTuber who, after her exploit on the platform, understood that she could also monetize in other ways. Ex “punk rock teenager who grew up on Evanescence and Thirty Seconds to Mars records“, because “I had this very tormented soul”, It is around music that Carolina has built what is now a real empire. His first album, “Carolina & Topo Tip: dance with us!” came out in May 2019 thanks to a
collaboration between Sony Music (label for which he still records today) and Studio Bozzetto &Co: it was a baby dance music project for YouTube Kidsthe children’s version of the platform, launched abroad already in 2015, and only later was Carolina’s related YouTube channel opened. “What if I feel prejudice against me from colleagues and professionals? Yes, several. Not just colleagues, though: I’m speaking in general. I am sorry. The ‘kids’ world is underrated. I wait for them all at the gate, because they go crazy with their first child and even the most skeptical fall into the trap“, she says between one date and another of the “Carolina – A fabulous Christmas at the theater” tour, which is seeing her perform in the main Italian theaters with the songs contained in the “Christmas Dance” album.
Business around the world “kids” abroad
Abroad, children’s music has long been a very strong market sector. Just think of the success of “Baby Shark”, the catchphrase – born from a popular song whose authors are unknown – which thanks to the video produced by Pinkfong, the educational brand of the South Korean startup SmartStudy, has surpassed the 15 billion viewsgenerating revenues of 22 million dollars only with the clip, as reported by Forbes. The fact that even an electronic music star like Marshmello created a brand for children, MelloDeessays a lot about the potential of the kids record market, over the years it has become a key investment area for the music sector. It was 2020 when Christopher Comstock, this is the real name of the American masked DJ, together with his manager Moe Shalizi launched the YouTube channel aimed at preschool children, uploading videos starring an animated character named Dee who runs around in a colorful world lively to the notes of songs composed by the musician such as “ABC Song” and “Rock-A-Bye Baby”: “
Children’s screen time is at an all-time high. We wanted to fill a gap,” Shalizi said. “There wasn’t a specific moment when I understood that this could become a business. It happened after believing in the project. The numbers proved us right. The market is gigantic. Like everything that revolves around children, parents and family”, explains Carolina Benvenga.
Between “Pistolero” and “Bobo Bear”
A fundamental role in the work team behind the success of the YouTuber, singer and presenter, face of Rai YoYo and the Zecchino d’Oro, is played by her partner Riccardo Scirèa successful author on the Italian pop circuit who over the years has written songs such as “Gunslinger” And “Hands up” Of Elettra Lamborghini,”I will trust” Of Marco Mengoni And Madame,”I lose my words” Of Riki In addition to producing Carolina’s records, he is the one who signs the original songs recorded by the singer.
In “Christmas Dance” there are three: “Bobo Bear”, “Christmas Forever” and “Christmas Night”. “We write the songs together, but the ideas come from him. .He is a musician, he knows how to handle music but also lyrics. He learned to juggle the vocabulary of children’s songs, going from ‘Pistolero’ to ‘Bobo Bear’”, smiles Carolina talking about Scirè. “With respect to the contents of the songs – adds Benvenga – I feel a gigantic responsibility. Everything I do and all the products we create look strongly at the target to which they refer, that of children up to 6 or 7 years old: from the text to the messages, from the graphics to the outfits, everything must be suited to that world”. In short, despite his passion for Evanescence and Thirty Seconds to Mars, we will hardly listen to Carolina in a rock’n’roll version: “At most I can make a rock for children”, he smiles.
