Music spending

How much do you guys spend on buying music (CDs, Vinyl, Downloads) in relation to gear? Personally speaking as a student I have roughly 20CDs each costing slightly under $20. Most bought first-hand but occasionally second hand as well

 

These days, I subscribe to Tidal's lossless streaming service for $20/month and probably buy one album outside of that once every 2-3 months.

 

I got a lot of my cds from my parents' collection, ripped a ton from the library, and bought a few zillion gift card bux on stuff myself. Now that I'm getting into vinyl though, I expect to spend $200 a year on records until I get all I want. I only have a few more equipment purchases left before I'll need to wait for a house to get into serious speaker world expenditures.
I look forward to collecting records and filling my computer with more fantastic music because it's definitely something that makes me happy!

 

Ohhhh....I spend roughly a 2 to 1 ratio on music vs. gear.

Equipment has diminishing return, a wall you slam into etc.

Music is limitless

 

I still can't bring myself to buy into a subscription service. It just seems so... inefficient?

I like being able to load up whatever I want before a trip without being at the mercy of download speeds, and sync'ing all my faves across all my devices, not to mention being able to queue up anything in the car without endlessly wasting bandwidth and battery life in streaming.

Never mind being able to pick any track and make a ringtone out of it or, gasp, even share it with a friend.

I feel like over my lifetime I'd end up paying way more with streaming anyway... I'd be curious to know how many of you have gone in that direction though. I've got maybe 200 CDs (I'm 33) and a couple gigs of singles bought mostly from Amazon (and other stores now dead; RIP: Lala, Zune, etc).

Haven't looked at what my online purchases total but it's far less than the CD collection, buying pattern is pretty uneven, one month I'll discover something and buy two dozen songs then the next month or two I might not buy anything. When I really like a band/artist I buy and rip the CD myself...

I might buy half a dozen CDs a year at this point? (used to be more before DRM free online stores) Not really sure... I feel like Amazon should be able to easily tally all this up for me since I buy it all there, but maybe it's best they don't.

I keep a FLAC library of the CDs half out of habit half because it just makes sense to keep a lossless copy I think, kinda like a negative or RAW files.

 

I hope I'm not pointing out the obvious, but all the paid services (Spotify premium, TIDAL, etc) allow you to download to your computer/phone whatever, so it's just like having your own files on your device (needing to use the service's app though, of course).

I primarily use streaming services for discovery, and have a collection of music of ripped CD's for all-time favorites or anything I like well enough that's super cheap at thrift stores....etc. Maybe $20 bucks a month on that. This results in listening to streaming and my own collection about 50/50 of the time.

 

I just can't get down with streaming. Maybe I'm just old, but I want physical media (or the files for 96 and 192) if I'm paying for it. This whole "rental music" thing ain't for me. Same reason I hate SaaS.

 

Will they allow me to download stuff to non-connected devices like a Clip Zip tho? Or move it around rather than having to re-download on each and every device? Then there's the matter of how many devices they'll allow me to download to...

Dealing with any of those restrictions just seems like a chore when I'm used to a tightly managed collection of my own. I can tell MediaMonkey to sync X and Z playlist then fill another 2GB with random content, or sync only from here not there...

Somehow I doubt the streaming services are that granular in letting you manage offline content, could be wrong, been a while since I took a hard look at any of them. I do use Spotify and Pandora to find new stuff at times tho. Internet at home has never been rock solid either, can always fall back on LTE but ehh...

My bought collection 'just works'... And I haven't pirated a thing in it for 10+ year besides sharing the occasional track I already paid for.

 

@Impulse No, needs to be a device that can run said app, so a computer, phone, or a DAP that runs android. Spotify's limit of devices one can download to is at least 3, if not 4. Unsure about Tidal but it's at least 2. So yes you are right there are those limitations

 

I'm probably just set in my ways, it's quite possible there's auxiliary apps or built in functionality that makes managing a streamed/offline library just as seamless... Like I said, never looked deeply into it. There's clearly other upsides to streaming.

That being said, right now I've got large chunks of by collection sync'd on the Clip Zip (with which I run daily), my phone, an old iPod touch (beach/beater at this point), my tablet, my old netbook (could probably wipe this one), and my desktop.

I guess I wouldn't need more than 3-4 devices, ignoring the one that would get stuck with my current collection forevah... I refuse to go running with my phone tho, heh, only reason I keep the Clip. Oh there's also some music on a Creative MuVo I use to sleep when traveling, haven't really sync'd/refreshed it in ages tho.

 

Streaming is great for discovering new music and also those times when you may only have your phone on you and want to listen to something specific that isn't in your phone's music library. It's not my main way of consuming music but it's still useful.

 

In almost a decade of buying and selling gear, I have not even scratched spending one third on gear what I have spent on music over the past 20 years. Maybe a fourth. To be clear, I would estimate that I have spent money on music at a 4:1 ratio over gear during my time listening to both.

Even if you are bonkers with gear, I think if you are approaching 1:1 you might be doing it wrong. Also, if you are young, and not in a thought-controlling oppressive regime like DPRK or certain counties in the deep south, you should be including CONCERT TICEKTS as buying music. This is necessary for two reasons: it helps you build a basis of what shit should sound like when reproduced in your home, and it exposes you to new stuff whether you intend it or not [note: if you are young / poor ALWAYS show up for the opening act(s), they are FREE].

I am no longer young, I have a young kid, and soon another. No longer are the days of "f**k it lets go to the show!" to listen to new music. Also limited are the days of sitting around with my cousins and closest friends discussing new acts and what is good/sucks. I bother to mention this because for me, streaming services have replaced shows and festivals as a means for mass exposure to new music. I don't pay for them, I deal with the ads, they are simply a means to put new info in front of me. If I like a song, I will listen around it, and if I like the artist/album, I will buy it. The day will come again that shows are more frequent, but I can't count on that for now.

 

If you include concerts, vinyl, digital, CDs, and even Bjork's Biophilia app on my iPad, I've probably spent something like 10:1 on music in ratio to gear. Probably more. I mean, hell, I've paid more to see The Rolling Stones in concert once than I did on my two desktop amps combined. Luckily it was a great show and not phoned in like a lot of Stones show have become.

 

Stones 2006? That was apparently an amazing tour. I met a friend at a bar the night after he had seen the Stones, and I had been in the basement of the student union at a concert / group wedding after Of Montreal insisted that we all needed to be "in wedlock" before they could f**k us with audio and not feel dirty about it.

Yeah, maybe my guess of 4:1 is really generous to gear...

 

Yes, 2006 at Candlestick Park. Metallica was the opener. And The Stones then schooled Metallica for almost three hours. It was a hell of a rock show.

Also, I love Of Montreal but haven't seem them live unfortunately.

 

Hmm, doing some fuzzy math, I've probably spent over $2.5K on the CD collection over the years, easily... Along with downloads it should be at least $3.5K (I really have no idea how much I've bought online since 2004 or so, ought to check tonight).

Along with other stuff (concerts, merch? don't wanna see the band T collection...) that should easily be 4-5:1 vs my current gear + "plan to buy"...

So I guess I'm doing something half right at least... Wish I had more chances to drive out to a concert, between work and living on an island there's less chances to see big acts. Tho DMB aside, some of the more memorable shows I've been to were either random local acts or at the yearly Indie Fest.

 

Fests are best! Huge bang for your buck, and almost guaranteed to expose you to music you would not have sought out on your own.

[Also, merch is your own fault: it doesn't count towards "your ears hearing music". As an aside, in order to get he last of my shit out of my parents house, my mom is sending most of my concert t's to be turned into a quilt that my kids can soil in the coming decades. She found it fitting.]

 

Ahh, you may not be able to hear a tee but it's still a sensory experience... Every time you put it on it takes you back, possibly reinforcing that memory. Either that or it's just dorky clutter that mothers or significant others put up with and I'm spouting psycho babble. Tomatoe-tomato right?

 

Festivals are hit and miss. I did Coachella twice and never will again. It's too big, too hot, too many people. The best festival I ever went to was All Tomorrow's Parties at UCLA. Sonic Youth were the curators and headliners. Nothing was too packed, the music was great, it was easy to get there and get around.

 

Trombone Shorty and Arturo Sandovol are the coolest concerts I've gone to, other than all the ones I've been in myself. One thing's for sure, concerts sure do help out tinnitus