Gifting music takes a new tune, digitally
By Heather Somerville / San Jose Mercury News
A screenshot of an Amazon music gift card
Got a music lover on your holiday gift list? Still not sure what to get?
It’s a lot harder these days.
CDs that were once wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree have given way to digital music libraries and iTunes gift cards. But it’s awfully hard to wrap an MP3 file with a nice bow, and you can’t labor lovingly over unpackaging a playlist as you would a CD.
In this post-CD world, giving music for the holidays is undergoing a transformation that has some music aficionados worried. They say music has been diluted from a soul-nourishing art form, at once both deeply intimate and social, to little more than background noise.
People are still buying and giving music this holiday season, but like nearly all types of shopping, more of it is happening online. Digital music stores such as iTunes, cloud music players and streaming services such as Spotify and Rhapsody make CD players look like antiques. More music lovers are requesting a Spotify subscription or a gift card to Amazon’s digital music store.