Has the Internet destroyed the gift of music?
I will never forget the day I listened to my first Beatles album. My uncle bought me Revolver as a gift. I still have it in my CD collection, which has been neglected for years thanks to my iPod. That album changed my life. My adolescence was spent learning as much as I could about music. And it all started with Revolver.
This Christmas, my husband gave me a CD. I cannot remember the last time (before this) I’ve been given a CD as a gift. We had just seen Mamma Mia! and I had been saying how I wanted to have the songs on my iPod. It was a great gift and I was very happy to get it. The first thing I did, however, was load it on to my iPod.
My husband wanted to give me something he knew I would love. He didn’t want to give me an iTunes gift card because it lacked sentiment. Since I began downloading music online (whenever Napster started), I haven’t purchased a CD for myself or anyone else. In the past, I often purchased CDs for friends and family. I now give iTunes gift cards, knowing that most everyone close to me has embraced downloading music.
In my experience, the standard of downloading music has taken away from giving it as a gift. I love music, and I miss getting it as a gift. An iTunes gift card is not the same thing as an album you’ve been waiting for. Has anyone else felt this way? How can one restore giving the gift of music in this digital age?
You should try buying and listening to vinyl LP’s… they make CD’s seem superfluous.
Nobody has truly heard the Beatles until they’ve heard it from vinyl.
“How can one restore giving the gift of music in this digital age?”
Stop buying iTunes gift cards for people and start putting thought into music gifts like your uncle and husband did when they gave you Revolver and Mamma Mia. With Facebook/Twitter, it’s easy to find what bands your friends like or what concerts they are attending. You can then use a tool like Pandora to find similar bands. Once you find something you like, go buy that album for your friend.
I subscribe to Rhapsody’s service, so I don’t buy a whole lot of CDs for myself anymore. But I love buying CDs for my friends and family as gifts.
Right on Chris. I appreciate those suggestions. I’ve generally bought gift cards since that’s what others have said they wanted.
Another friend told me he’s too picky about his music to want someone else choosing his albums for him. Maybe that’s turned me away from it as well. Who knows. But I think it’s possible to purchase iTunes albums for other people, something I didn’t know before I wrote this obviously.
Thanks for the comment!
Picky giftees but still want to give physical music? Give an Amazon or a Best Buy gift card or something. Or even better, I’d be a lot of local music stores would be more than happy to sell you some sort of gift certificate. If not, they deserve to be out of business.
i think a lot of people feel this way and that is why vinyl is making a huge comeback (sales up 50% in the past year). any “tangible qualities” buying a CD gives you are only amplified when purchasing vinyl. plus a nice record player is a “totally legit” decoration.
Actually I’ve taken to picking up vinyl of albums I really love. I grew up around a robust vinyl collection, and even when our record players were out of order, I would still find myself flipping through the albums, reading the lyrics, soaking up the art. Vinyl is, I feel, the best possible format in which music can really be “gifted”, since it’s more than just the songs, it’s the whole package. (Also, I LOVE the smell of old records. Something about the packaging or something just gives them a autumnal scent that I just adore.) Some modern vinyl samplings come with digital download codes too so you can “legitimize” your download collection and still have the collector’s item that has a more tangible value.
There’s also something to be said for the “mix disc” or “mix tape” if the giftee has a tape deck still. Hand-picked, sentimental by nature, and prone to being covered with scribbly hand-drawn art, these approaches also encapsulate music as a viable gift. The hand-picked mix has the distinction of being a sampling of music that is totally unique on the part of the giver.
Is it easy to just tell someone about your favorite band and let them go download it? Yeah it totally is, and it CAN take away from opportunities to gift someone with an album you love, and relish in the fact that they might ponder over the cover while standing by their stereo to listen to it for the first time. It’s a hit-or-miss situation these days I agree, but the joy of giving music isn’t ~totally~ lost.
Liz,
What would it be like to give an iTunes gift card along with a note about something specific you had in mind for them? That way they’d know you were thinking about being personal as well as getting them something they like.
That’s a cool idea too Dez. I like that a lot.
Some of the comments here hit on what I was thinking too, that it’s more than just the songs. It’s being able to hold a record in your hand, even smell it (like Giania said above) and have that visual, tangible element to the gift. And I think it’s cool that vinyl is making a comeback, but of course not everyone has a record player anymore. So I really love the thought of adding a note to let the person know you are thinking of them, yet they can still take or leave your advice and make their own use of the gift.
Thanks for the comment
I personally buy most of my music on CD. Mainly for technical reasons: Uncompressed, Not subject to electro-magnetic radiation, no copy-protection.
Of course, I just rip them to my media server.
But for the high-impact music gift: Concert Tickets. Expensive, difficult to schedule and obtain, and impractical. The perfect gift!