“It has changed drastically,” said Michael Anderson, Kidz Bop’s senior vice president of music, who has overseen the recording process since the series’ inception. “It used to be that I’d record songs, collect them, then had time to figure out the sequence and release it.” Now, he said, “Every other day, I’m submitting a new song to record, then our video team is coming up with scenes for a new video and getting it shot quickly.”

While the rise of streaming over the past five years has been well-documented, the changing listening habits among elementary-school-age kids is less clear. Back when choosing music involved a monetary transaction, whether at Walmart, iTunes or a record store, parents were likely supervising these choices. Now, it’s shifting. The sight of 9-year-olds with their own smartphones, while maybe not standard, is no longer shocking, and young people are iPad and laptop natives. That means the 5- to 10-year-olds who make up Kidz Bop’s target demographic are making more of their own music choices than they were a decade ago.

“What’s been really transformative for us has been smart speakers,” said Zaraya. “Children can ask for what they want directly to the speaker.”

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But streaming services aren’t built with children in mind, as Greg Cham, a former consultant for Kidz Bop who has worked on projects including Disney’s multiplatinum Cheetah Girls and “High School Musical,” pointed out. “They’re designed specifically for adults,” he said. “The problem is that parents don’t have the understanding or the ability to curtail the activity of children at this point, primarily because technology has gotten away from the parent.” (Cham is also, not coincidentally, the founder of a new music streaming app for kids called Fruit Punch.)

According to the user agreements for most streaming services, including Spotify and YouTube, users must be at least 13. Although many kids (and parents) ignore this rule, left to their own devices, will more third graders stream the Kidz Bop version of “Me!” or the Taylor Swift version? And maybe more important, do parents really want their third graders browsing Spotify or YouTube alone?

“One reason Kidz Bop CDs have always done well is because it’s a safe environment,” said Nauman. For parents today, controlling their children’s access to music can be an all-or-nothing proposition. Parental controls on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Music are often unwieldy and unreliable, a broadsword solution to a problem that needs a scalpel.