We’re out of the holiday season for now, but that doesn’t meant the next one isn’t right around the corner. These gifts for music producers are sure to satisfy the hard-to-buy-for creators in your life.
Useful Gifts for Music Producers
What do you get someone who has everything? Musicians, producers, and engineers usually buy their own gear after hours of research and deliberation — it’s very specific to their taste and needs. That’s what makes buying gifts for music producers so difficult!
Luckily there are plenty of practical choices out there to surprise even the pickiest gift-getters…
Storage
We’re talking about hard drive space. In my opinion, this is the #1 gift you can get for any producer. Maybe it’s a little on the ‘boring’ side, but it’s utilitarian. Backing up our work, in multiple places, is so, so important, and when you have GBs upon GBs of instrument libraries, they need somewhere to live.
Hard drive space is actually super cheap per GB, and even SSDs are becoming more and more affordable. The Samsung TT5 SSD is great for an affordable, portable drive, while the Glyph Studio series is a fantastic desktop storage solution.
DAW Keyboard Covers
You’ve probably seen these on people’s keyboards at some point before. KBCovers makes these really cool stickers you place right on top of your laptop or full-size keyboard telling you where all the important shortcuts are.
They make them for every DAW, and even for photography and video editing software. This is one of the coolest gifts for music producers who are still learning their way around a DAW, and even experienced users might find a shortcut they’ve never used before!
Subscription to a Sample Service
Audio sample subscriptions like Splice or Sounds by Native Instruments are a perfect way to keep music producers loaded with more samples than they could dream of.
Splice is probably the most popular sample service out there right now. The baseline subscription is super affordable and provides users plenty of credits to download the loops and one-shots they want. If the music producer in your life doesn’t have this, they’re sure to love it.
Plugin Bundle Subscriptions
Subscriptions are the way of the future, whether it’s for streaming entertainment or tools music producers use everyday. Plugin companies have been smart to jump on the subscription train, which offer all or select plugins from the developer at a low monthly rate.
Waves, Slate, and Plugin-Alliance currently provide the top subscription options.
MIDI Controller
MIDI keyboards, particularly the portable ones, make great gifts for music producers. Sometimes we focus so much on our at-home setup that we don’t think of having gear we can throw into a backpack to work on-the-go.
One of the most popular small MIDI controllers is the Akai MPK Mini. It’s inexpensive, super portable, and gets the job done. What more could you want?
Hearing Protection
Photo Courtesy of All Ear Plugs
Producers’ greatest asset is their hearing, so it’s imperative to keep it safe. Live music is unfortunately a thing of the past at the moment, but as soon as concerts safely resume, so will the need for high-quality earplugs.
We’ve taken a look at the some of the best earplugs for musicians in the past, any of which would make an awesome gift for music producers.
Conclusion: Gifts for Music Producers
It’s tough trying to buy for engineers and producers — no doubt about it. Hopefully these suggestions will spark some clever ideas the next time you have to shop for the pickiest person in your life!