Before smartphones came along and music shifted from cassettes and CDs to streaming services, setting kids up with a safe space to listen to music and stories was only a question of how many albums you could afford.
We have virtually endless options now. But many of them involve using a smartphone, computer or something else with a screen and a connection to the wonders and dangers of the web.
For Andy and Julie Liddell, an Austin couple who met in law school, handing off a smart phone or iPad to a toddler wasn't the right fit. For one, screen time is pretty addictive to most of us and Julie was reviewing a lot of research about screen time through her work with the Judicial Commission on Mental Health. And, two, even YouTube and other services that put up safeguards for kids often continually feed new content based on algorithms that tend to trend toward more and more extreme content.
Then there are the stories many parents may already know all too well.
Case in point: When the Liddells were on a trip to see family in Colorado, they let their daughter, then 2 years old, watch a Mickey Mouse video on YouTube. They hadn't previously given her iPads or other devices.
"For a month after that trip every time we pulled the phone out, she was losing her mind 'I want to watch a video, I want to watch a video!'" he said.
That set the stage. But it was when the couple's daughter was 3 years old that the idea to start a business was born.
"She came to us one day and ask 'I want to hear Tears for Fears' -- or it sounded more like 'teaus fo feaus,'" he said, mimicking his daughter's voice. "It's what we had listened to in the car on the way to school. We pulled it up to listen to, and my wife and I were talking and it was like 'why can't she do this for herself?'"
So, the couple set off in 2018 to create an alternative to give kids the freedom to explore music and podcasts without the temptations and untamed content of a constant internet connection. The idea is fairly simple -- let kids check out music from a curated list that parents can program or select from a set of options and let them explore as they'd like without being glued to a screen or sharing data with a massive tech company.
The Liddells started exploring possibilities and the competition. They knew their target age range -- 2 to 12 years old -- wasn't a good fit for audio assistants like Alexa because kids often don't properly enunciate their words and you might not want something listening in your kids' bedroom anyway.
"So really, we tried to design for the needs of the kid, the needs of the parent and the needs of the family," he said. "Really right now, none of those needs are being served by screens or voice assistants."
They worked with Fred Bould, an industrial designer who worked on Nest, Roku and GoPro, to develop the Boogaloo Sound Companion, a standalone device that uses a dial and simplified displays to help kids navigate to songs and stories they like. It's a bit like a bluetooth speaker with a kid-friendly set of controls that tie into an app that parents manage.
And Boogaloo is very clear about the features it doesn't have: It doesn't have a microphone or camera. It collects only limited data. And it's not a marketing platform.
The Sound Companion has a music library of 60 million-plus licensed songs and podcasts, and it plans to add audiobooks soon. While it doesn't have a constant internet connection or require Wi-Fi, it updates with new content over a Wi-Fi or bluetooth connection and stores the content on the device.
Parents can fully customize the programming, or provide some basic information about their kid's age and a few basic family values questions and get curated content.
Boogaloo will develop a limited selection of songs and podcasts to populate the six buttons on the Sound Companion and update them, Andy said.
"What kids need is the opposite of what adults need. We have it all figured out, and we just want more of the stuff we like," he said. "Kids don't have that. They need to be exposed to a lot of different music so they can learn what they like and what they don't like."
Now with an alpha product ready and product testing with dozens of families complete, the Liddells have both left their full-time jobs to focus on Boogaloo.
The Liddells have been bootstrapping the business thus far, but they're raising funding to enable a beta launch by the end of the year, hire new talent and launch commercially early next year.
"We've talked about the harms and the dangers, of course. But we want to focus on the fun," he said. "... our internet and our computer tools should make us better versions of ourselves. That's really not happening, but it still can."
