The integration of digital tools into education has gained increasing importance, offering innovative methods to enhance learning. In music education, digital applications can improve perception, performance, and theoretical understanding while promoting positive attitudes. However, in China, their use in music classrooms remains limited due to a lack of localized tools and alignment with curricula. Therefore, this study aimed to adapt a musical application, “Music Island,” into a Chinese version aligned with the Chinese primary school curricula. Music Island is a Hungarian application based on the Kodály method and designed to teach music to Hungarian primary school children across various platforms. It includes four main components: SoundForest (environmental and instrumental sounds), RhythmDesert (rhythm exercises), MusicRepublic (Music theory, reading and writing), and MusicFactory (music editing).

By integrating edutainment and gamification strategies, the adaptation process involved four primary steps:
(1) translating and localizing textual content to ensure linguistic and cultural appropriateness,
(2) redesigning visual elements to align with Chinese aesthetic preferences,
(3) replacing and adding audio content with Chinese narration and songs, including traditional nursery rhymes, and
(4) integrating traditional Chinese instruments and familiar melodies from the national curriculum into the game tasks.

The adapted application has validated its content validity with six experts from the musical education and curriculum development fields. Findings showed major revisions in translating and localizing texts and replacing audio content with Chinese narration and songs. The authors revised the texts and rechanged the necessary audio content based on the experts’ suggestions. Then, the revised version was sent to the experts again to rate the adapted Music Island application. At this time, the content validity index (CVI) is 0.86 (> 0.78, the recommended value), revealing that the adapted content is linguistically clear, comprehensive, and relevant to Chinese culture and aesthetic preferences. The inter-rater reliability also showed the representativeness of the Chinese primary school curriculum with the value of Cohen’s kappa, (k* = 0.72), indicating a good level of agreement based on cutoff scores: fair (0.40–0.59), good (0.60–0.74), or excellent (k > 0.74). The face validity (FV) of the Music Island app was also verified with three primary school teachers using a 2-point scale (where ‘0’ for inappropriateness and ‘1’ for appropriateness for each component of the app), All teachers gave minor suggestions for improvement. After revising these minor suggestions, all teachers rated the FV of all four components as 4, reflecting their high level of appropriateness. Thus, the face validity confirmed that the Music Island app was appropriate for the targeted Chinese children. This study shows the importance of cultural adaptation in digital education tools and highlights the Music Island app's potential to enrich music education in China through interactive and localized learning experiences. The Music Island app provides a model for creating educational resources that are engaging and appropriate to school curricula.

Keywords: Music Island, Digital Music Education, Chinese Students, Cultural adaptation.