Digital Music for 9 YO

Updated on January 25, 2015
L.M. asks from Chicago, IL
10 answers

So my daughter is starting to get into music more and more which is great!

I've bought her CDs of some of her favorite artists, but would like her to be able to begin her digital music library. I love the idea of her being able to keep her favorite music at her age forever. I recall the cassette tapes that were the thing when I was young, and never replaced.

She does have an old Android cell phone of ours to play games etc (with no service) so she does have the ability to download music via our WiFi. My goal is to set up an account for her to have her music, but requires a password of my choosing each time she wants to buy a song - this way she can't download inappropriate music and spend $$ with 1-click.

I've tried adding her app to my Amazon music account but it was not working and the help desk suggested I create an email address for her and therefore her own account. I'm not ready for her to have an email address, but I guess she doesn't even have to know about it.

I'm wondering if your kids have digital music on their devices and how you have managed it.

TIA

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So What Happened?

We figured it out. We created a Google account for her. I download the music she chooses (that I approve of) then share it with her. Thanks for all your advise!

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J.H.

answers from New York on

We have one iTunes account for music and apps for the entire family and both kids (13 & 10) know the password. They have been taught they can't buy anything without asking first and have always abided by that rule.

If I get something via Amazon or eMusic it simply gets uploaded into iTunes. We have Apple Share (or something like that) set up so you can see every song we own in the cloud and you can download what you want to each device - we have thousands and thousands of songs and there would be no way to store it all on one device without eating up all the memory.

2 moms found this helpful

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V.B.

answers from Jacksonville on

We have one iTunes account for the family (4 of us).

Husband has a HUGE music library (on actual CD, plus CDs he had and uploaded, but no longer has the physical CD). They are welcome to download pretty much ANY of the music in our library (husband has clean taste and there isn't much that is inappropriate for a child even your daughter's age, but ours are 13 and 16).

The kids use the same account to download apps, and while we have everything set up on a credit card, they use iTunes gift cards to make their purchases. We keep a log at home of who has was balance, since we keep a positive balance on the account and nothing is ever charged to the credit card. The kids do not have the password, so they have to have one of us put in the password to make any purchase (songs OR apps), and in-app purchases are turned off for all of our devices, so that isn't an issue, either.

All in all, it works well. If one of the kids wants a song or app, and buys it, the other can have it also, no extra charge. Same with all of husband's 155 MB of music, which he is adding to continuously. They actually like a lot of the same music, so it's really nice.

Alternately, we could have set up separate iTunes accounts, and each person had only their own devices attached to their own account, and all hard copy music could be uploaded as desired to each account (a lot of work), but then apps would have to be purchased multiple times, too.

I know with the new family cloud sharing (or whatever) iTunes has, we could set it up differently now, but we haven't bothered. It works fine for us like this so far.

2 moms found this helpful

T.S.

answers from San Francisco on

Why can't you just download ITunes onto your home computer, using the family email address? That's where all of our family music is stored, and I can easily see what's been purchased.
The music can be shared among all of our devices.
We also make playlists and burn CDs to listen to in the car or give as gifts.
It's pretty easy, and cheap. Back in the early 80s I paid like $1.50 for the latest single on 45, on ITunes it's only 99 cents.
Music, one of the few things that has actually gone DOWN in price over the years!

2 moms found this helpful
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A.M.

answers from Phoenix on

We have a family iTunes account and our 7 year old has an old iPod. We just download "his" music on his iPod. You can an old one online cheap, or a shuffle for like $40-50.

2 moms found this helpful
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G.B.

answers from Oklahoma City on

My grandkids, ages 4 up to 16, all have email accounts but they do not know the passwords. They can email their parents, siblings, and a few friends. She knows I have full access and if she does anything that I don't approve of she's off the computer.

I think you're doing fine with her but I imagine she's able to show you how to do the amazon thing and how to download music to the phone. I use Pandora I think. There are tons of free places to get music to download too.

1 mom found this helpful
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R.B.

answers from Dallas on

My kids are younger then her we purchase music they like ie: Frozen sound track and create a Playlist from our itunes library and move it to their devices.

1 mom found this helpful
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D.D.

answers from Pittsburgh on

Yes my son has an email account because he has a kindle, which requires an Amazon acct. He doesn't actually know he has one, and he does not know the username or password. I do all the downloading for him. He was 7 when I set it up.

1 mom found this helpful
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R.L.

answers from Hartford on

I letmy daughter download whatever music she likes. she is 13, a bit older than your daughter,but whats the point in listening to music that you dont like? if youre worried about themusic being innapropriot then have her download clean versions or kidz bop. Thats what my daughter did when she was around that age. She is now xpirementing with her music.

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M.B.

answers from Austin on

We bought our grandkids tablets this year for Christmas. They are 7 and 2 1/2. We just created a generic "____@____.com" type of account, and we set the password and have it pretty much locked down.

It may seem silly to give a tablet to a 2 1/2 year old, but the tablets stay at our house. We are the only ones that can add games, and any purchasing options in the games is locked out via password.

This way, they can play on the tablets (with our permission and supervision), and we don't have to worry about them breaking our $200 tablets. (We got the Black Thursday/Friday special at Walmart for $30). If their tablet breaks, well, they are out of luck, and it didn't hurt our tablet.

However, our grandson CAN (and is permitted) to open the e-mail account. We occasionally send him a short e-mail and this way he is learning digital citizenship at an early age, and learning about proper e-mail usage and etiquette. His mother also suggested we download "Voxer" for him, since she and her ex use Voxer. This way he can also talk to his dad and M. when he has the tablet.

Again, we are trying to teach proper digital citizenship at an early age.

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C.B.

answers from Boston on

If you buy the CD's you can just rip them on any computer using the included mediaplayer and move them to any device. Or you can buy music on Amazon or download YouTube songs via Google "free YouTube to mp3 converter" (copyrighted songs will be blocked). There are many places besides iTunes that will let you buy albums or songs digitally. I have android device since I hate iTunes. My daughter carries a cheap Sandisk MP3 player to school and back. It is loaded with 8 GB of music she choses, which is a ton of music. Super easy interface, you just drag and drop from the music folder on your computer to the device. Amazon and many other services have cloud based storage but I prefer to keep my digital footprint as small as possible so we just back up anything important onto a 1 terabyte external drive (also available on Amazon, and no I do not work for them but hate shopping and love the ease of finding whatever I need in 1 place). Enjoy the music!

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