Sesame Street Music Works Launch a Success

Perhaps the largest single initiative in AMC’s history was the launch of Sesame Street Music Works, a three-year, multiple-media program designed to get young kids involved in music making along with their parents, teachers and caregivers. The initiative includes a special website full of musical activities called The Music Zone, and a video and activity toolkit that AMC’s parent organization -- NAMM-International Music Products Association -- provided free to child care organizations, educators and providers across the country. In a groundbreaking move, the general public could also order Music Works outreach kits free of charge by going to the AMC web site, generating awareness and support of the AMC and its mission.

Unveiled in November with a series of television interviews, a nationwide press drive and a live Muppet webcast on America Online, the program was an immediate hit: almost 150,000 people visited the AMC website to order toolkits in November alone, an increase in traffic of more than 900 percent over the same month the year before!

In all, the launch made over 150 million media impression: reaching more than 18 million website viewers, 10 million television viewers, millions of AOL subscribers and 27 million print readers, with follow-up press coverage still appearing. Special Sesame Street-themed public service announcements, promoting the value of music making and branded to AMC, are debuting this month.

NAMM is the founding sponsor of Music Works. The program also had its foundations in a collaboration among Sesame Workshop (producers of television’s Sesame Street for more than three decades), AMC, Chevron Texaco Foundation, MENC: The National Association for Music Education, The National Endowment for the Arts and The Heckscher Foundation for Children. Designed with the participation of Dr. Linda Page Neelly of the University of Connecticut and other early childhood experts, the program promotes the idea that making music is vital for everyone, not just “musicians,” and shows simple and fun ways kids and adults can make music together.

Because of this program and the AMC’s involvement, hundreds of millions of people around the country have been exposed to the message that music and making music is integral to a child’s full development. The kids who are creating their own operas on the Music Zone website, playing along with the Music Works video and making drums out of oatmeal cans today will be tomorrow’s professional and amateur musicians—creating the next generation of music makers and keeping the importance of music and music education alive.