The gist: This isn’t a regular streaming service. How to gift it: You can buy a gift card online or in select stores that, for $54.89, supplies a year of ad-free listening. If you like starting your day with medium-tempo prog-rock sung by a raspy-throated front woman, that’s what you’ll get as the algorithm learns more about you. Really, the key to Pandora’s success is its Music Genome Project, which, thanks to a combination of expert musicologists and artificial intelligence, analyzes every song for its nitty-gritty attributes and recommends songs based on the user’s listening history. While the regular Pandora is still free with ads, there are two paid subscription levels: There’s the ad-free Plus at $4.99 a month and the $9.99 Premium, which allows on-demand and off-line listening, plus $14.99 family, $4.99 student, and $7.99 military discount options. The gist: The long-running streamer has stayed in the streaming conversation with upgrades to its original formula of selecting a song or artist and getting a customizable radio station comprised of similar tracks you can revisit at any time. You can buy them in stores, usually found in the electronics section or near the checkout counter, and online, and the recipient just needs to redeem it at checkout when they sign up for the plan of their choice. How to gift it: There’s no specific gift card - physical or digital - for this service, but Apple’s cards can be spent any way you’d like in the company’s store. Then, of course, Apple has a habit of bundling its services, so users can find plans that add in Apple TV+, News+, Arcade, and iCloud storage for a slightly increased fee. With those three, you get the option of saving up to 100,000 tracks for off-line use plus use on other devices, so you’re never too far away from your unique library. There’s also a $4.99 student plan, a $9.99 “premium” (the standard plan), and a $14.99 family plan for up to six people. Still, that gives you access to the full library, curated playlists, radio, and more. The newest option, Apple Music Voice, costs only $4.99 a month with the trade-off being you have to use Siri on your phone or home device to control it. There are also exclusive songs and performances, plus radio stations like Apple Music 1, where top DJs and artists broadcast their favorite tracks, live shows, and interviews you won’t hear anywhere else. The lossless audio is a step above the quality you’d get from other services, plus there’s the option of hearing songs in Dolby Atmos spatial 3-D sound, which requires some specific hardware like the AirPods Pro and Max. The gist: The selling points of Apple include high-quality audio options, a library of 90 million songs and plenty of exclusives from some of the top artists in the game. In the latter case, a user can start with their individual subscription then upgrade to the larger plan that allows up to six users to access the service and have their own individual libraries, so you could always give them the equivalent gift of cash to cover the bill for however long you choose. The only catch is that while cards can come in a number of monetary denominations, they can only be used to pay for Spotify’s $9.99 premium subscription, not the $4.99 student or $15.99 family plans. For the digital version, you’ll just need the email address of the recipient, and all of the gifts can be redeemed online at /redeem. How to gift it: You can buy Spotify gift cards online and in stores from multiple retailers including Amazon, Target, Best Buy, CVS, and PayPal. Whether that last example is a selling point or a red flag is up to you, but simply put, there’s plenty of content and social experiences you’ll only get here. Then there’s the exclusive content - in addition to Spotify Singles and other live performances by a number of cutting-edge artists, the service has a number of exclusive podcasts, most famously Joe Rogan’s. But if even if the social aspects aren’t a selling point, Spotify’s curated playlists, from both algorithms and actual humans, are great for finding new songs and artists or getting mixes of your old favorites. Spotify encourages this, most notably with its year-end Wrapped and discovery playlists that allow users to compare and share their listening habits. You should definitely factor in the social aspects of this streamer because chances are your giftee’s friends and family will already be using it and have songs and playlists that can only be opened in this app. The gist: Spotify’s popularity is a big selling point, and not just in the “It’s what all the cool kids are using” way.
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