Meaningful Connections: Making Music Relevant for Generation Alpha
- BPI announces the latest in its series of Insight Sessions in association with Bowers & Wilkins
- With special guest speaker, Sarah Boorman, General Manager Youth Strategy, Universal Music Group UK – and panelists from Beano Brain, SuperAwesome, Yoto, Young Voices
The BPI, the representative voice for the UK’s world-leading record companies and label businesses, today announces the latest in its series of Insight Sessions.
Meaningful Connections: Making Music Relevant for Generation Alpha is presented by the BPI for its Insight Sessions in association with Bowers & Wilkins.
It will take place on 15th April 2026 at 3pm in the newly opened UMusic Shop, Camden, and will feature special guest speaker, Sarah Boorman, General Manager Youth Strategy, Universal Music Group UK.
For this Insight Session, the BPI is exploring how music plays with out with Generation Alpha in new research powered by research platform Indeemo. Generation Alpha are those born from around 2010 onwards — the first generation to grow up with streaming, algorithms and connected devices shaping how music is discovered, shared and created from earliest childhood.
This event will launch the publication of new BPI research, share some of the key headline findings and will feature a keynote and discussion from leading Gen A experts including speakers from Beano Brain, SuperAwesome, Yoto, Young Voices, and Universal Music Group UK.
Sarah Boorman, General Manager Youth Strategy, Universal Music Group UK, said:
“As the music industry continues to evolve, understanding youth audiences is essential. Young people are not just future fans, they’re shaping music culture in real time, and there is so much more we can do to better serve them. To connect artists with the next generation of global audiences, we need to engage in ways that are relevant, accessible and age-appropriate. I’m excited to be part of this conversation with partners who are ready to move this forward.”
Under-18 listeners are one of the music industry’s fastest-growing yet least strategically understood audiences. Engaging them is not simply a question of safety or compliance: it raises deeper questions about catalogue strategy, rights frameworks, metadata, AI, devices, and how cultural context is introduced and sustained from an early age.
This Insight Session brings together perspectives from leading experts to explore how Generation Alpha is discovering, using and creating music today — and what that means for the industry tomorrow. Rather than treating young listeners as a single “kids” category, the discussion will examine how listening habits evolve across childhood, how early cultural touchpoints shape long-term fan behaviour, and where current industry systems struggle to meet these needs.
Topics will include why significant portions of catalogue remain under-utilised for younger audiences; how metadata, AI and classification models could improve discovery without flattening cultural meaning; the growing role of dedicated kids’ devices, games and virtual worlds in music consumption; and what rights holders need in order to support compliant, commercially viable child-focused products and opportunities to engage Gen A children with music from an early age.
From those looking to just learn more about this demographic, to those working across catalogue, platform design, audience development or new revenue models, this conversation offers a more grounded look at an audience segment that is often discussed in abstract terms but rarely addressed with the strategic depth it deserves.
Leon Neville, BPI Director of Insight & Innnovation, said:
“The BPI launched its Insight Sessions well over a decade ago, just as streaming was taking off. In that time, we have hosted dozens of editions in the series that have sought to explore the key trends and dynamics that shape our industry, from the advent of AI to the influence of superfans on music consumption. This latest session on Gen A will spotlight arguably the most important thing in our industry right now – our future customer base!”
Event timings:
15:00 Doors open
15:30 Event Starts
17:00 Networking
18:30 Event Closes
Footage will be made available on demand after the event for BPI members.
Meaningful Connections - Making music relevant for Generation Alpha - Universe