# How Much Money Do You Spend on Classical Music?



## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

That's right. How much money do you spend on Classical music? For many of us, the money spent on Classical music amounts to acquiring recordings - CD's, DVD, records, internet downloads etc., and of course, attending concerts. I am curious on what amounts of money you spend, on average, say per month.

Problems:-

(1) This is an international forum, so currencies need to be comparable. For the purpose of this discussion, you may wish to use or convert your amounts to say, United States dollars, or Euros, or Pounds Sterling; whichever is easiest for you. Please use your judgement.

(2) I thought of proposing this question alternatively by asking what percentage of your _income_ you spend on Classical music. But is not entirely appropriate because not only do we have members who are not full time workers (such as students and indeed, retired folks), but high income earners may reach some saturation point on the amount of Classical music they may wish to consume anyway (there is afterall, only a fixed finite number of hours per month!)

Me, I think I spend on average about USD500 per month. 10% of that on concerts, the rest on CD recordings. This is a nasty habit.

Thank you.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Usually more than I have. I order a CD, then another and it seems that I have almost crossed my budget. But there is some more money, not enough for a CD, but I buy one anyway hoping that I will find lacking amount somehow. But then I see another interesting CD so since I have already crossed my budget it won't be so bad to cross it a little bit further. And so on. 

Most of the times it ends with feeling of unsettlement and sleepless night during which I wonder how to get the money until the postman of doom will appear before my gate.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

$500 US??!!

And I thought I was bad. I probably spend $200 US or a bit less per month... although I tend to cut back now in the winter... having less expendable income due to increased costs of heating and electricity.


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## Ilych (Jan 28, 2010)

I wish I had the luxury of even spending 100.00 US on music. As it is, I make do with the first rate classical selection on Rhapsody for 14.00 US per month. I just hope they don't take any of my favorites off.


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## Poppin' Fresh (Oct 24, 2009)

Heh, I wish I had the luxury of having enough time to listen to all the new music that $500 a month could afford me.

I don't spend any amount consistently a month. I could go several months just checking out cds from the library. The most I'll spend in a month is probably about $100 US.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

The buying habit I have is this: favourite internet websites have a sale on, favourite labels on significantly reduced prices. Then I end up buying a signifcant number of these. I do deliberately wait out for these sales. The good thing though, is I noticed I only buy lesser known composers and their works on these sales As a result, this has expanded my collection into many, many lesser known composers of the Baroque to early Romantic period. For example, I just ordered 3 CD's on some symphonies and overtures of Franz Ignaz Beck (1734 - 1809), a composer's whose music I don't think I have listened to before.

I'm trying to cut it down to about USD300 per month. And yes, I have unlistened CD's still in original factory plastic wraps not yet listened! But yes, I do geniunely go through them one by one.

(I'm avoiding using real life examples of internet sites because I _don't want _this thread to be a commercial survey).


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## Gangsta Tweety Bird (Jan 25, 2009)

probably too much. about $80 this month but some of that was gift cards from christmas. i get my moneys worth though cuz i hardly ever buy new cds. instead i like searching for bargain used cds on line and in real life music stores. that $80 got me about 30 cds (some of them doubles) and im not talking stuff from those cheap budget labels except naxos which has basically trancended being a cheap budget label despite their prices


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## Orgelbear (Jan 2, 2009)

After years of buying far too many CDs, DVD-As, SACDs, cassette tapes, and LPs (OK, I'm dating myself, now), I probably only buy one to three CDs a month now. On the other hand, I do spend about $1,500 US per year on concert tickets, plus some occasional travel to hear a special event.


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## nefigah (Aug 23, 2008)

Now that I've moved from Studenthood to Gainfully Employed, I'm able to buy music more consistently. As others have expressed, a bigger issue is time, especially because I like to listen to things quite a bit before moving to something else. I suppose recently I've purchased 1-2 CDs a week. I try to get something in the vein of my current "love," (currently Bach/Beethoven keyboard works), as well as something for future exploration (lately Renaissance and Mozart).


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> $500 US??!!
> 
> And I thought I was bad. I probably spend $200 US or a bit less per month... although I tend to cut back now in the winter... having less expendable income due to increased costs of heating and electricity.


you guys must be very rich!

I thanks the internet since now I can check my intended to buy CD by listen to the sample first before buying. this save me a lot from a CD that I don;t like (usually happened in '90s era). I think a maximum of two or three CDs a months is already a big spending. In Singapore it is harder to get classical CD and online purchasing is the only option. For less curious pieces I borrowed it and thanks to our local library who have a massive collection of classical CD.


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## Elgarian (Jul 30, 2008)

Twenty years ago I was a thoroughly addicted heavy cigarette smoker (about 200 per week), but I managed, after a great deal of difficulty, to give up. Part of my strategy for giving up was to put aside, each month, the money I would have spent on cigarettes, and use it to buy things that were life-enhancing rather than life-destroying: primarily books, art and music. Each year I changed the monthly amount (if necessary) to correspond with the cost of 800 cigarettes. So all the books, pictures, and CDs that I buy have been bought with money that I would have burned, if I'd still been a smoker. I like to think that the tobacco companies have paid for it all (and are still paying).


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Earlier I´d spend most of my surplus on music + travels once or twice
a year, and some books. Today however, it is only a very small part of 
the income. Not more than twice a year I´ll spend 100 Euros a month,
otherwise it is normally between 20 and 40 Euro a month. The Web 
services and the possibility of a cheap prescription of a certain number of 
tracks every month + various sales + the amount of what there is already 
in the collection have all helped downsizing the expenses. 
Taking an overall look, my main concern is the proportion of _time_, 
not money, that I spend on music.


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## Jaime77 (Jun 29, 2009)

I go on binge buys where I get a lot in one go. But it averages out at 50 euro a month or so. That's c.68 dollars


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## Andy Loochazee (Aug 2, 2007)

I spend virtually nothing.

All that spending is now well behind me, having spent several thousands of British pounds over a run of years when I was eagerly intent on building up as full a library as possible. I realised early on that I would not be able to afford to do it on my own, so I did a deal with some close relatives whereby we share/copy each other's stock. The sharing system works well. There is nothing of any importance that is missing in this family library from 1600-1970. Other people may consider doing something similar, as copies taken for personal use only are legit.

To be completely truthful, I regret spending a lot of this money even though at the time it seemed like a good idea to acquire material like all of Haydn's symphonies (yes all!). I found that with a lot of material of that ilk, although eagerly awaited, after a few plays through it never got played again, or very seldom. Much of it is highly generic and very bland indeed, and it is struggle to find any material differences that justify all that expenditure. Tons of Vivaldi all sounds much the same; ditto for Bach, and a good deal of Handel's operatic material is pretty tedious (some sublime, I accept).

But try to convince all the 15-19 year olds on here of that kind of thing is clearly a waste of time, just like it would be to say to any them "don't smoke". In the case of smoking, some 20-30 laters when their breath stinks to high heaven, their teeth are blackened, their facial skin is all rotten-looking, and they're coughing up chunks of lung and gobbing all over the place, they might begin to realise it was perhaps not a great idea!

Leaving that nasty thought behind, I still love classical music, and listen to it whenever I can, but either the radio or a very narrow selection of the entire CD stock is sufficient. Clearly not everyone is like me. Some seem to find lasting value in all that they buy, and can't wait until their next shopping trip. Good luck them, and I sincerely mean disrespect in saying that, in some cases, I am a tad cynical of the wide-eyed "_oh gosh, how wonderful this new stuff is and how did I miss it all this time"_ kind of gushing talk. Usually people become more discerning as they get older, not more bowled over in typical dewy innocence of youth.


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## KaerbEmEvig (Dec 15, 2009)

Well, I will only buy the Arkiv English Concert, Bach Concertos and Vivaldi's string works. I plan not to succumb to the shopping mania - currently I only own 13 CDs with music (out of which 3 [all of which is Chopin] are classical, 1 is jazz, 3 are covers [1 jazz cover and 2 string covers of popular songs], 1 reggae-blues-rock fusion and 5 prog-rock [4 by Muse, without the first album and Led's ZoSo/IV]).

From non-classical I will only buy Cymande's anthology, Mahavishnu's anthology, Opeth's Morningrise and Damnation and that's it. From then on I will be only spending my money on bargains and sets that have many pieces of interest to me.


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## muxamed (Feb 20, 2010)

I spend approximately 50 Euro on classical CDs every month. I always buy my CDs through Amazon because it is a lot cheaper there. I have 400 CDs in my classical collections. 

One question to you all: How much music (if any) do you download on the Internet?


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

It seems likely that we have already almost reached a global, sufficiently complete library of classical music, always available, and various communicative and ressourceful fora for the exchange of views, via the Web. When I began collecting, it hadn´t even been invented, though we did have access to some limited public library collections. Nowadays, collecting one´s own stock of LPs and CDs is of course in a sense an old-fashioned thing and quite probably a thing of the past, belonging to elder generations, except from a certain "museum" value, if one strives for a kind of completion in a field. 

But I also get a lot of enjoyment and info from, say, the covers and liner notes of them. Given the now fairly limited expenses, this is one of the reasons that I prefer to belong to this elder generation stuck in material fetichism in the Bourdieuan sense. A second one, of course, is getting into the habit of collecting in itself. The feeling, however, that the classical culture is generally waning and might be reduced to a dusty, rarely heard curiosity-thing within my own lifetime is another reason. It is quite likely that there is only going to be 50% of the symphony orchestras left in this country in, say, 25 years. CD-shops are closing down massively here in Copenhagen. The likelyhood of a vivid classical culture also as regards new recordings of rare repertoire under such circumstances is not that great, and libraries are already now cutting down their collections of classical literature, scores and rarely-heard CDs, due to a lack of ressources, space, or public interest.
Objectively, the costs for aquiring a good classical music collection have been going down and it has never been cheaper here, but that is not necessarily going to continue in the future; difficult to say, in particular as regards specialized and rare repertoire. 

But great idea this family-library and sharing within a group of people, Andy Loochazee, and it probably promotes much social life and reflection on various issues as regards music as well, that can also imply a more discriminating taste in the end - I mean in the positive sense, even if your remarks, though true 
as regards the general development of people´s habits when "coming of age", are a bit harsh in reducing the possibility of curiosity or any further development when one has reached one´s ... 20th birthday ?? A taste must necessarily be based on accumulated knowledge, and buying and listening for years, after all, can refine the knowledge and expand the horizon, provided that one is motivated for it, so that music is not only a matter of vegetative enjoyment of the already-known. "Expansion", being in a specialized or more general field, can have an intellectual quality of its own as a continous travel of exploration, or a value professionally - the cultural field in general, the background history of music and the various alternative interpretations of works can be increasingly interesting. After all, it must necessarily take years of listening and collecting to establish such a valid overview and to make this a personally felt, not an only-bookish, experience.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Eh, maybe between $100 & $200 (US) per month, on average.

However, there are *three* (3) components to the Classical Music budget:
1) Home purchases [e.g.: CDs & (to a much lesser extent) DVDs, also books]
2) Live performances, and 
3) Charity & Patronage-

And in spite of the global recession, it's still a little surprising that it's taken this long to get to #3. Maybe part of is the current state of the economy. Maybe part of it is that most of the contributors are younger than I am, and are not in as good a position to be charitable. Maybe it's that many of the posters come from nations where there is a more considerable 'enforced contribution' to the Arts budgets (via taxes), which I shouldn't doubt would have a suppressive effect in the realm of personal Arts charity.

For better or worse, major American Arts ensembles are not as much "wards-of-the-state" as most parallel groups in Europe. They'd be in a parlous state if not for private generosity. My typical pattern is to find _one_ (sometimes two) reasonably local performing arts institution(s), and direct my contributions there...


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Roughly Australian $100 per month, which is about $75US, more or less.

I tend to buy budget or mid price cd's, or two for one, or things on special. I rarely buy full-price cd's & after 18 months or so of collecting no big boxed sets. I'm coming round to the philosophy as "less is more" because of not only the storage space required of a big collection, but also because I like to listen to friend's cd's as well as radio. So I'm beginning to buy what I really need & am 100% interested in, going to listen to regularly, rather than just once or twice. If I had the internet at home I would use things like YouTube to listen to classical as well - maybe in the future?

I've also been struggling with giving up smoking, in the past month it's been quite successful. So I have a bit more money to spend on going to classical concerts, I plan to go to about 10 a year, mainly chamber concerts.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Andre said:


> Roughly Australian $100 per month, which is about $75US, more or less.
> 
> I tend to buy budget or mid price cd's, or two for one, or things on special. I rarely buy full-price cd's & after 18 months or so of collecting no big boxed sets. I'm coming round to the philosophy as "less is more" because of not only the storage space required of a big collection, but also because I like to listen to friend's cd's as well as radio. So I'm beginning to buy what I really need & am 100% interested in, going to listen to regularly, rather than just once or twice. If I had the internet at home I would use things like YouTube to listen to classical as well - maybe in the future?
> 
> I've also been struggling with giving up smoking, in the past month it's been quite successful. So I have a bit more money to spend on going to classical concerts, I plan to go to about 10 a year, mainly chamber concerts.


G'day! CD prices are ridiculous in Australia. For that reason, plus our very strong exchange rate of late, I have not bought a CD in Australia (whether by shopping in person at shops or by Australian websites) for several years. I have been importing them from two favourite Classical music websites (90% of what I buy), plus occasionally from various Amazon sites. I just don't see this country of ours being competitive enough in terms of price and stock availability. It's kind of depressing that my money on Classical CDs are flowing overseas. But that's what could be said of many things consurmers buy in Australia these days anyway.


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## ulyssestone (Jan 6, 2010)

I live in China and spend around 15 pounds per month on classical music.

9.99 for Spotify subscription. I got most of my music from there. I live very near to the national library so it's free to get access to the books on classical music.

4 Pounds a year for the domain name: www.spotifyclassical.com hosting is free on Blogger.

The rest is for classical concerts.


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## JSK (Dec 31, 2008)

I don't tend to buy much because I'm so cheap and often don't end up listening to all that I buy. I will buy pretty much any (of the few) amazing deals I find at a physical store. I will often go a month without buying anything. If you average it out, including the occasional gift I ask for for xmas or something, I probably spend something like $20-30 a month on CDs. Rarely will I buy a CD/Set that costs more than about $3 per CD, and I've found some extremely nice stuff at Goodwill for $1 every now an then. I'm a collector who loves good deals.

If you include sheet music, I spend a lot more on music. When I'm going to work on a sonata by (insert name her) for my lessons, I will usually buy that composer's complete sonatas, usually on Henle unless a comparable edition is available at a significantly lower price.

There are few concerts near my school which I would pay to see, and those I would pay for are usually free and/or I am sometimes involved in them so that doesn't cause any problems financially.

My school also has a music library with a good selection of CDs for reference, but it's only particularly outstanding area of depth is with women composers, so I sometimes buy additional stuff for myself I'm interested in. Not too many scores though so I prefer IMSLP.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Lots of books of music to sightread through (things that are easier to sightread, like some of Mozart's works). Also, I buy different pieces of brass, strings, bridges, and tools for guitar modification and crafting. Piano tuning books, and tools (strobe, dampers, specially made hammers, tuning forks, and parts for repairs). Also, I buy old pianos (presumed ready for the dump), fix them up, use horseshoe nails to get back string-pin tension (most think they can't get that back with old pianos). But in conclusion, it really depends on the projects I'm working on.

It may seem as if I'm just hurling money out, but I make my living through music, and a majority of my monthly expenditures (aside from insurance, phone, house payment, etc.) go into music. Other people go on vacations, buy a truck with a lot of torque, etc. I just spend my money on music.


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## Grosse Fugue (Mar 3, 2010)

More than I affford. I'm a student but I still find myself going to concerts and buying recordings. iTunes make it too easy.


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