This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s Q2 2026 magazine issue. To read the full issue, click here.

Correction: In the print version of this story, the quote that begins, “If I need a specific acoustic guitar sound to be the ‘voice’ of a character, AI will give me a different-sounding guitar every time I hit ‘generate’…” was incorrectly attributed to Jay Stutler but was actually said by Andrés Walker. This has been corrected in this version of the story, as well as on the digital PDF version of the magazine. We apologize for the error.

Ever since Mickey Mouse whistled his way down the river in Steamboat Willie, music has been inextricable from the art of animation. But for today’s kids content business, music does more than set the tone—it shapes how shows travel, connect with audiences and endure across platforms.

Music is often the first touchpoint audiences have with a property. (Chances are that your first brush with KPop Demon Hunters (pictured) was hearing “Golden.”) It’s immune to language barriers and can be a self-sustaining marketing machine, even while an IP is dormant. (Quirky, comedic songs from Phineas and Ferb frequently went viral even after the show went off the air—the show’s “S.I.M.P.: Squirrels in my Pants” video has 51 million views and kept the IP in the zeitgeist until it was revived last year.)

Songs and scores are important for brand identity—strengthening the core franchise and building a fanbase. But with tighter budgets, growing discoverability challenges and emerging tech tools, is there a way to get those benefits without an eye-watering price tag?

Owning the music

Whether it’s generating its own revenue or serving as a marketing tool for the franchise, music is unique because it can thrive separately from the rest of the property, on playlists, in consumer products and at live events. So owning a show’s music (instead of licensing it) can make real business sense, according to Andrés Walker, an animation composer and founder of Score Maverick, whose music credits include Star Wars: Visions Vol. 2, Wow Lisa and Brave Cat.

When producers pay for an original score, they can reap value from that asset as the music publisher, gaining revenue through royalties, he adds. In contrast, licensing music from a library is really just a form of renting, so “your show’s main theme could technically pop up in a random commercial later that year,” Walker warns—diluting what should be a core creative element of a show.

He advises producers on a budget to be strategic here by hiring a composer to create an original score for the important tunes (opening song, character themes) and license non-exclusive music for less weighty moments.

Affordability may not be an issue for Disney, but the market leader also sees songs as an asset that can be extended and monetized on their own. “All of our music is designed to live [both] inside an episode and as standalone experiences kids want to replay,” says Jay Stutler, Disney Television Animation’s SVP of music.

For Disney Jr.’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends, the team wrote “Do the Spidey” with interactive dance lyrics (“Raise your hands up high, up high…Now get down low, low”) that work in the context of the show but also give kids a way to bust a move on their own. The song has racked up 5.3 million views on YouTube and is featured in the interactive Dance ‘N Crawl Spidey plush toy.

While not every studio is in a position to convert its soundtrack into a line of consumer products, the most accessible way to transform songs from one-off moments into engagement drivers is through online video platforms like YouTube. For CBeebies’ hit series Hey Duggee, “The Enid Song” became a YouTube smash hit with 6.8 million views. The complex effort reenacting iconic music video scenes—including the claymation effects from Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”; the pencil-sketch sequence from A-ha’s “Take On Me”; the dancing trio from Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”; and the tunnel-style zoom from The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”— earned producers Studio AKA and BBC Studios a BAFTA nomination. But it didn’t stop there.

The show’s music team, Tim Digby-Bell and Toby Lee, created multiple versions of the song, including a mash-up with the show’s biggest hit (“The Stick Song”) and a Halloween version that each racked up almost eight million views—becoming access points for even more kids (and their parents) to discover the franchise.

The digital strand keeps the music machine running for the IP. In addition to songs from the episodes, Digby-Bell and Lee have written about 50 original pieces for YouTube, with videos that reuse animation assets from the show.

There are many ways IP owners can refresh a song on digital platforms, from remixing, sing-alongs and dance-alongs to lyric videos and visualizers (videos with looped episode clips that are easier to create than full-blown music videos). When songs are uploaded to YouTube, producers get the ad revenue and master rights royalties, whereas public performance royalties (for broadcasting a song on TV or streaming, or playing it on the radio or in a store) are typically shared between the producer and the composer via their affiliated performing rights organization, or PRO.

Budgeting for creative

Speaking at Kidscreen Summit’s “Hit Play” panel this year, KPop Demon Hunters song co-writer Daniel Rojas observed that unlike many departments, music is not paid according to the amount of time an artist puts in. “In most cases, we get paid per song or as a package deal, so it doesn’t really affect the bottom line as much as the order of the budget,” he noted.

In other words, moving music creation to an earlier point in the development process won’t make it pricier. But sooner is better, to allow the animation team to design the visuals around the music instead of having to go back and tweak the movement to fit music that arrived late in the production process.

That has been the priority for hitmakers like Stutler, who has supervised iconic soundtracks for multiple toons, including Phineas and Ferb, Doc McStuffins and DuckTales. At Disney, it’s important for the song to come first, in order to give animators more clarity, he says.

“They need to know what they’re choreographing and how to stage a scene. They can’t really do that until they hear the song—the energy, the lyrics, the storytelling…even the comedic gags that might be internalized within a song.”

Ultimately, a cartoon makes a bigger impact for the audience if its music is designed from the start to accentuate each scene’s emotional beats. Walker points to Bluey as a great example of this. Every episode of the hit series is scored individually—which is more of an exception than the rule in preschool TV. The show treats its score as bespoke storytelling, adding a “surprising amount of emotional specificity” to each episode, Walker says.

He cites the episode “Sleepytime” as an example of great scoring, where the music mirrors Bingo’s emotional journey as she learns through dreams to start sleeping in her own bed instead of with her parents. The music starts out playful as Bingo’s dream logic unfolds, before opening up emotionally in the final stretch when she learns to sleep separately but can still feel her mother’s presence. “The score is not just decorating the dream world,” says Walker. “It’s carrying the feeling of growth, separation and reassurance [that helps] the episode land so deeply.”

Stutler also encourages embracing animation’s lack of rules to get playful, distinct and unconventional with music. A unique musical approach helps hook the ears of today’s kids, who have way more familiarity with a wide range of genres than previous generations, thanks to streaming platforms that give kids instant access to the last 100 years of recorded music.

For example, on Sofia the First, Stutler mixed a classic Disney musical style (princess pop) with surprising elements like hip-hop and swing to create a distinct “hybrid” genre. “The song ‘Blue Ribbon Bunny’ is a great example of us marrying different genres in a way the audience ate up,” he notes.

And while today’s adults are trained to hit the “skip intro” button, a good theme song is still indispensable in kids TV to anchor a show, Stutler adds. “It sets the musical energy, the aesthetic, the anticipation. Theme songs build excitement and nurture emotional connection. The minute a kid hears, ‘There’s 104 days of summer vacation,’ they know Phineas and Ferb is about to start.”

Inside the numbers

There are several different ways to approach scoring an animated series—and which one is best depends on whether you want to actually generate revenue, not just incur costs. “Music scoring will almost always be [better for the bottom line] than licensing cues,” since original music has earning potential—though how much depends on where the series airs, says music biz expert Benom Plumb, an associate professor at California’s University of the Pacific and the great-nephew of legendary record producer Neely Plumb (The Sound of Music).

Music royalties from streaming shows are “really small compared to broadcast TV,” but a hit soundtrack could increase those earnings when it’s played on music streaming services, he adds.

The amount producers typically pay for original music varies based on several factors (genre, episode length, studio budgets), but Plumb says it’s typically structured as a flat fee per episode. While a relatively unknown composer could charge US$5,000 per episode for a half-hour series, that figure can increase to US$15,000 for more established composers.

For producers under budget constraints, Walker recommends building a “thematic kit” instead of paying to score every episode individually.

“If I provide the stems [the separated tracks like just the drums or just the melody], a clever editor can repurpose those sounds across a whole season,” he explains. It’s an affordable way to ensure sonic cohesion, but producers must be very clear about what they’re looking for. If you can show us two or three tracks capturing the ‘soul’ of your show, we spend less time guessing.”

If cost is the only concern, the best option is licensing from music libraries. Though it’s non-exclusive licensing, Plumb says these services offer a simpler process with preset prices, especially compared with going directly to major music companies—record labels or music publishers like Universal, Warner, Sony or BMG.

Music libraries will sometimes charge in the hundreds of dollars, while the majors will usually license in the thousands or more per use, he says. “With music libraries, there is rarely any haggling. It’s all there in a nice, neat package at more affordable prices.”

Another option Plumb recommends is sending out creative briefs to sync agents representing independent artists and composers. “The vast majority of music libraries and sync agents representing independent artists can offer ‘one-stop’ licensing at more affordable prices.”

The AI question

Music is such an essential element of animation that getting rid of it isn’t an option, so today’s financially challenged producers are exploring what generative AI can and can’t do to make the process faster or more affordable. Music generator Suno—now widely regarded as the most popular AI music tool—offers a free option along with a US$11 per month pro tier and a US$35 premier plan. Other notable players in the market include Udio, AIVA and Mureka. (None of these companies responded to requests for comment about this story.)

While these tools can quickly churn out 30-second clips, Walker warns that AI-generated music often has low audio quality and lacks clean stems (the separated elements that make up an audio track—such as drums, bass, isolated vocals or melody— that are essential for remixing, editing and licensing). For kids animation in particular, timing is crucial, and AI still can’t “read” scenes well enough to know when to hit a joke or get out of the way of dialogue, he says, adding that consistency is also lost when using AI music generators.

“If I need a specific acoustic guitar sound to be the ‘voice’ of a character, AI will give me a different-sounding guitar every time I hit ‘generate,'” Walker says. “It ends up slowing me down, because I have to spend so much time curating and fixing things.”

Berklee College of Music professor Jonathan Wyner agrees that AI-generated music is not well-suited for post-production and remixing. “The quality of output of gen-AI music at this moment in time may be acceptable where quality matters least,” he says. Wyner is the head of artistic technology initiatives at BEATL, an innovation hub exploring AI among other new interfaces for music creation. He also underlines that it’s impossible to copyright AI-produced music, which means producers can’t “own” or monetize a show’s theme music.

“There’s also a high chance of getting flagged by YouTube’s Content ID [automated copyright system],” Walker notes, “because these models often spit out melodies that are way too close to existing music they were trained on.”

So is there a less risky way to explore gen-AI? Walker says the “safe” bet is for producers to experiment with it in the ideation stage during pre-production, “to create mood boards or temp tracks to show a composer the feeling they’re after. It’s a communication tool, but definitely not a final-delivery tool.”

Taken together, the takeaway isn’t about replacing traditional approaches, but refining them—making smarter choices about what to own, how to extend music beyond the show and where new tools can support the creative process. In that context, music isn’t just a production cost—it’s a long-term asset with real ROI potential.

Image courtesy of Netflix.