The present article explores the role of music-related artefacts and technologies
in children’s lives. More specifically, it analyzes how four 10- to 11-year old girls
use CDs and DVD games in their music-play activities and which developmental
themes and potentials may accrue from such activities. Those artefacts are recent
examples of the history of mass-production, mass-distribution, and mass-consumption
of music. Since children do get into touch with the mass-phenomenon
of popular music and artists, concerns may be articulated that this can have problematic
effects on children’s lives. By help of, among others, Marx Wartofsky’s
artefact theory, the article tries to get beyond “black-or-white” prejudices concerning
technologies and their limited insight; this is done by suggesting to focus
on the children’s own perspectives and how music-play activities may be meaningful
in relation to the children’s complex life-worlds. Further, this leads to an
analysis of music-play activities as play with an art-form (music), which includes
aesthetic dimensions and gives the music-play activities its character of being
aesthetic play. Following Lev Vygotsky’s insight that art is a way of building life,
it is argued that music-play similarly can be viewed as a way for the children to
build their lives.