What Musicians Actually Want as Gifts (According to Musicians on Reddit)

There's a near-universal experience among musicians: a relative finds out you play an instrument, and from that point on, every birthday is a small disappointment wrapped in good intentions. A pack of picks you'll never use. A metal sign that says "Guitar Room" with your name embossed on it. A capo in a size you already own three of.

I read through 3 threads on r/musicians and r/Music — about 180 comments, with one thread alone running 118 replies deep — to find out what musicians actually want when they're not being polite about it. The answers were more consistent than I expected, and the strongest pattern wasn't a product. It was a warning.

The thing musicians warn against, repeatedly

Don't buy gear. This came up in every single thread, in some of the most-upvoted comments, and from multiple working musicians. The reasoning was nearly identical each time: musicians are extremely particular about their equipment, and a gifted pick or string set or pedal is almost guaranteed to be the wrong one.

One commenter described having a drawer full of picks, strings, straps, capos, and slides received as gifts, none of which would ever get used. Another said gear is "too complex and personal for anyone other than that person to choose." A third specifically warned against personalized musician gifts — wooden picks with your name engraved, custom signs — calling them the kind of thing well-meaning relatives buy when they don't know what else to do.

If you take only one thing from this post: the obvious gift is the wrong gift. The closer something looks to what a music store sells, the more likely it is to sit unused.

What musicians actually want

Gifts that protect or extend their music life

Custom-molded musician earplugs. This was the highest-upvoted single recommendation across all three threads — 25 upvotes for the original comment, with multiple co-signs. The pitch: regular foam earplugs muffle everything, but custom-molded musician plugs let most of the sound through while blocking the harmful frequencies. The reasoning was personal for several commenters: tinnitus is permanent, and the people most likely to develop it are the ones who don't bother with protection until it's too late.

Gifts that let them choose their own gear

A Guitar Center shopping trip with a budget. Two of the top comments on the longest thread were variations of this. Don't try to guess what they need — hand them a gift card (or just bring them to the store with an envelope of cash) and tell them they have $X to spend on whatever they want. Multiple musicians said this would be the best gift they could imagine receiving.

A Sweetwater or local music store gift card. Same logic, less of an outing. For musicians who already know exactly what they want, the gift card lets them buy it without you guessing wrong.

Gifts that are personal without being intrusive

A custom leather guitar strap. This was the second-most-recommended specific product across the threads, and the discussion around it was unusually warm. One musician described receiving a handmade leather strap with their initials embroidered on it when they started music school, calling it one of the best gifts they'd ever gotten. The reason it works where other "personalized musician gifts" don't: a strap is a piece of equipment they'll actually use for hours a day, not a decorative object. Etsy was specifically named as the place to find them.

A canvas painting of their instruments. Less obvious but it came up with 12 upvotes — someone described a partner who'd commissioned a canvas of their guitars. It's a piece of art about the thing they love, without being a gear cliché.

Gifts that are about experiences, not objects

Concert tickets to a band they're currently into. "Experiences over possessions" came up in multiple comments. The specifics matter: not a stadium tour for a band they liked five years ago, but a smaller venue show for someone currently in their rotation.

Vinyl of an album they love (only if they own a record player). The r/Music thread was emphatic: don't gift physical media to someone without the means to play it.

Gifts for the multi-instrumentalist or hobbyist

An exotic small instrument. One commenter had been gifting unusual instruments for years — kalimba, ocarina, harmonica, theremin. The logic: serious musicians often love picking up something completely outside their usual instrument, and these are cheap enough to be low-stakes.

The single best gift, if you trust the data

If you forced a single recommendation from across these threads, it would be the Guitar Center trip with a budget — not because it's the most exciting, but because it had the highest praise-to-controversy ratio. No musician in any thread said they wouldn't want it. Several said it would be the best gift they could imagine.

The runner-up is the custom earplugs. Less fun in the moment, but every musician with tinnitus wishes someone had given them a pair earlier.