I am not certified in Kindermusic, nor have my children taken Kindermusic classes, so I'm not really qualified to give you a run-down comparison.  The thing that makes them hardest to compare is that one is a curriculum designed for home use and the other is a franchise.

The advantage to doing Kindermusic is that your child would be participating in a classroom setting with other kids, playing ensemble, and interacting with a live teacher.  I think there would performance opportunities (mostly just for the parents, but it still gets your foot in the door).  The community choir I had my kids enrolled in did, and it was good practice for them.  The cons are, you're committed to a specific time and place to get your child to class.

On the other hand, Preschool Prodigies is a curriculum parents can do with their children at home.  They can watch the videos again and again any time of the day, every day, once a month, whatever fits your schedule.  There is no public performance on the calendar, but there is no commitment requiring you to juggle your schedule either.

I did a little browsing on the Kindermusic website before responding, and it looks like the "Young Child" is designed for 5-7 year-olds, but there are classes for other age groups as well.  I looked at their "curriculum solutions" as well, and I caution that those packages are designed for classroom teachers who already have a good idea what they will be doing.  It's not a step-by-step, day-by-day curriculum like Preschool Prodigies, but PsP doesn't come with so many physical music toys aside from his package that includes the desk bells.  

What it boils down to is deciding whether you want to take your kid to a live class or teach them at home.  If you want a live class, you might also look into Suzuki or Yamaha if they are in your area.
Side note-  If you do happen to choose Preschool Prodigies, you can get 20% off with the coupon code "TCM", which would also give me a little kick-back.      Good luck!  Either choice would be a good one.

I know a few other BrillKids users that also use Preschool Prodigies.  It's a solid curriculum- Rob has done an excellent job.  And thank you both! 

Hello everyone.  I haven't posted any updates on our music site for awhile, but we have been growing!  There are three things going on right now that are especially great for early learning:

My review (and giveaway!) for Preschool Prodigies. which ends Friday:  https://www.teaching-children-music.com/2016/03/preschool-prodigies-review/

Freebie- Mini-story book printable, "The Rhythm Family"  https://www.teaching-children-music.com/2016/03/rhythm-family-mini-book/

And finally, we are having a huge sale on all of our music products.  We use the same colors as Little Musician, so our printables are compatible and complimentary.  https://www.teaching-children-music.com/crowdfunding-sale/

Thank you for looking!
Tamsyn Spackman

Sanger is trying again with Patreon. 
https://www.patreon.com/LarrySanger?ty=h

Thank you, both, for you kind words.  

We really love Piano Wizard.  We liked SM too, but PW was was a better fit for my kids.  My review is here:  http://www.professional-mothering.com/2013/08/piano-wizard-review.html

We also love the piano duster app, as well as some of the other apps by Joy Tunes- it's great stuff, and if you have a device that can use them, it can be the most affordable option.  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/piano-dust-buster-by-joytunes/id502356539?mt=8

Also, with the disclaimer that I am a musician so I do things differently than most, what has worked best for my family is color-coding our piano books and practicing with a color-coded piano insert.  Free printable:  http://www.teaching-children-music.com/2012/10/movable-do-piano-insert/

Along that lines, I have created several color-coded printables and am making more for my website:  http://members.teaching-children-music.com (shameless plug!)  The colors are the same as Little Musician, although I favor movable do, so C is not always red.  If a song is in F major, the F will be red.

I haven't used the piano duster app as much as some of my friends who have had great results with it, but we are still using Piano Wizard and it's a good program.  I mostly use it to reinforce what we are doing with the John Thompson method books, which I prefer.  Like Soft Mozart, you need a MIDI capable keyboard to use it.  The piano duster has some kind of sound recognition thing built in so you can use it with a regular piano, although you can use it with MIDI too for better accuracy.

I have been building my music website, www.teaching-children-music.com for a few years now and have recently uploaded several free printables.  I would like to announce the new subdomain I have added, which is a membership website with all of the previous digital products I made, and which I am continually building.  It is $20 for year's access, and there's an affiliate program too.  members.teaching-children-music.com

Here's an e-book sample of my work:  http://www.teaching-children-music.com/products/Music_Games_and_Activities.pdf

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/6v-0TCigKzA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/6v-0TCigKzA&rel=1</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/A8f9_nCIBVY&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/A8f9_nCIBVY&rel=1</a>

Ooh!  I'll have to look into this, I didn't know there was a moveable "do" icon set.  Sweet!

I don't know about you, but I can't read out loud as fast as the videos eventually get.  In fact, I can't read it in my head that fast.  Yet.  The point is to follow along on pace to the beat. 

It's the "uh" in "buh" that we don't like.  "B" says "b".  That sound is easier to isolate in a word like "cab" than "bird", if that's helpful.  If "B" said "buh", and "D" said "duh", a word like "bird" would be pronounced "buh-ir-duh".  The common way of teaching reading by phonics used to involve sounding words out like that, "buh- irrrr-  duh", said faster and faster until it somehow magically switched to sound like "bird".  It was confusing to kids because the "uh" wasn't there any more.  Now there has been a movement to change and strictly isolate only the actual sound a letter really makes, with no "uh" sound.  While we're on the topic, "Qu" sounds like "coo", and "W" says "oo" as in "tool".  If you listen to the woman speaker in LR, she usually pronounces the letter sounds like this.

Having said all that, it's ultimately probably not that big of a deal.  Just as tiny children can intuit phonetic rules, they can also intuit where sounds like this don't fit in.  I learned to read the old way, and I didn't even realize I had learned it "wrong" until I took some teaching instruction classes at a homeschool convention.

I skip over this part too.  The "cuh" in cow, etc, is especially annoying to me, not just from phonics, but more specifically from a diction point of view.  My oldest son didn't read as early, but his diction was impeccable when he was little because I tried to teach him to read English the same way I learned to read other languages in my diction classes as a music major.  So we practiced making sounds quite a bit and it really paid off for him, even though he didn't ultimately learn to read phonetically.  My point is, that even if our litttles weren't learning to read phonetically, as babies, they ARE learning how to talk.  Diction is therefore very important- they are learning how to make the sounds that make up speech.  I use IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), and it's great for any language because it clearly and universally isolates the sounds of any language and gives them a consistent symbol.  In LR, the girl voices are usually okay, not always, but the man voice is usually off unfortunately.

Yep.  I skip over the word split section, especially when a letter is isolated.  When it's separated correctly by syllable, such as in "rain-bow", I let it play because I do see value in learning how to chunk words.

Thanks for sharing, I'm going to share this article on facebook.
Moderation is key, as always.  If a parent has to choose between sleep and reading to the baby, well let them choose sleep.  But that doesn't make the advice to read to the baby bad advice.  I wouldn't tell someone not to exercise because it's more important to eat a healthy diet.  It's not an either/or thing, and never was.  I object to this objection.   

Do they get much out of being read to?  Of course they do.  A baby is perfectly capable of feeling love and affection.  Reading is a service we give our babies.  Eye tracking exercises, and flashcards accomplish the same thing.  I don't read Shakespeare to Philip, I do word flashcards.  And he loves them, and showed interest from a few days old.  But I don't feel as anxious to get her reading that I do with Ruth, who I can see and measure my progress with.  That's human nature, we like to see and measure our results.  But even if we can't measure the day-to-day progress, it doesn't mean it's not effective.

Anyway, that's just my opinion.  I'd love to see what other people think.

That would be an awesome feature, but I don't think LMs has it.  Piano Wizard has a free-play part of their program like what you are describing.  As far as I know LMs was designed to be more of a singing/vocal and ear training program with some piano features added in as a perk.  It meets that objective very well.  So I don't think it's fair to say it's useless, it's just not meant to be a piano program.  I don't use the "free play" section very much myself, for the same reasons.  We click around on the mouse now and again.  I hope the developers see this thread, because adding MIDI capability in a future version would be really neat.  I've also recently gained the understanding that we can import our own MIDI files into LMs, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do this yet.  It makes me wonder what else I've been missing.
At any rate, LMS is an amazing program, and we love it.  Piano Wizard may be a better fit for what you are looking for, IMO.

We did get YBCR in Spanish.  It's well done, but my kids didn't like it as much as they had already seen YBCR in English so many times and think of it as a baby show.  We then got Kidstart Spanish.  The format of both is very similar- see words isolated on the screen, then a little clip demonstrating the word, plus a few Spanish songs.  They're both well done.  If you were to get just one, I'd recommend Kidstart Spanish, as there are more songs.  I can't say my kids are bilingual, but I don't blame either program as it's simply something we haven't been consistent with.  Still, they have gained a lot of vocabulary from both programs.  Salsa is their favorite.  I'd like to try Whistlefritz when our budget gets around to it.

I don't know about faster, but I do think they learn differently.  My boys are more analytical about things.  Peter didn't read as early, but he's a great scientist now and loves science fiction.  My next girl loves to do art, crafts, and worksheets and is very motivated by things like stickers.  Patrick was my earliest reader yet.  He's a rambunctious, spunky kid, but he also loves to read and get some screen time.  Ruth is shy, loves to sing, and is my flashcard girl.  Bottom line, all kids are different.