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Play Music More Often




"Music is the soundtrack of your life," said Dick Clark. When you hear a song, if you are like me, it takes you back to that time in your life when you heard the song for the first time or to the occasion where you heard it. That is powerful. Can you imagine the music that our residents have heard in their lifetime? Just like the world in general, they have experienced so much and it is nice when we, as activities professionals, can take them back to the happier days, with the soundtracks from their lives.

So, the question I pose to you today is how do you find and present music to your residents? Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is by way of hired professional performers. That is a given in our jobs, so in this post, I'd like to focus on a few other ways that you can bring music to your residents that they will recognize and enjoy, along with theme music for your special events.


Pandora, Amazon, (search MP3 Download then search free songs) and YouTube are places that I have personally used already. In doing research for this post, I found a few helpful articles that deserve a good look if you just starting to download music. Since I am not an expert in this field, and because I want to give credit where credit is due, I will simple direct you to the articles that I found relative to our use and hope that you will click the links to read more: 

And there are online music players available for free:

So that is how to FIND the music. Now that you have it what can you do with it? Just recently, I spoke with the man who set up our sound system in the Auditorium, and asked about connecting my IPhone to the system. He said "sure, it can be done." Shortly after that, I received a new cord that has been one of the best items that I've gotten for my job! It is an adapter cable that allows me to plug in my phone to the system. I had a 50's theme party and I found music of the 50's on Pandora. I used it for background music the night of the party. And then, we had a Cinco de Mayo party and music from YouTube was played that was just right for the evening.  

As I sit here and write this, I can visualize the 100's of CDs that I have in my office that I've collected over the years of being an Activities Director.  Just think how much space I can save and how organized they can be if I can turn them into mp3s, I can't wait to go back to work and find the right volunteer for this job! 


See, inspiration can come at any time. LOL!  I hope this article helps you add more music into your community's programs. It shouldn't cost you much financially but may take some time to get a nice library of music together. I truly believe that music will add an extra touch to your programs in the future and will enhance your resident’s journey on the "sound" track of their lives.






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