02-04-2012, 01:56 AM

Music - it costs a fortune nowadays...doesn't it??? (as my father says)

Well not really. I have just calculated the cost of my iTunes library, which effectively, give or take a couple of loose albums that i have packed away somewhere.....comes to...

Almost 1200 GBP. (based upon 0.79 GBP per song)

Now, if you think about it, This doesn't sound too steep considering it spans across 2 decades of purchasing music on CD...which is only approx. 60 GBP per year...this costs less that my petrol money....

so, what do you think and what is the cost of your music library?

J

02-04-2012, 01:58 AM

Hrm, interesting!

Roughly 11,500 USD, not including the LP's I still have lying around.. and probably a few things I haven't ripped etc. Now granted, many of those were purchased in either GBP or DM along the way too.

02-04-2012, 02:15 AM

Originally Posted by Dysfunction

Hrm, interesting!

Roughly 11,500 USD, not including the LP's I still have lying around.. and probably a few things I haven't ripped etc. Now granted, many of those were purchased in either GBP or DM along the way too.

crikey! so, without giving your age away, how much a year is that you've spend on tunes?

02-04-2012, 02:43 AM

Interesting thought.
I actually think that the cost of buying a physical CD (new) is ridiculous, especially for metal. HMV in the UK, charge £12.99 in stores, as a minimum, so it's cheaper to buy online (hence they are in crisis), but still £9 an album is steep. I buy a few downloads here and there, but overall, my vinyl collection cost me around £10,000, and CD's another £2000 I suppose.I have probably spent £100 on downloads.

02-04-2012, 08:32 AM

iTunes changed the ability to purchase more quality music, whether people know it or not. Say, you spent $1k on single purchases, as compared to $12-$15, you know you will be getting a bunch of crap with that cd because only a few good songs are on it. I would rather purchase $10k in songs from iTunes, than accumulate $10k worth of songs from cd's because I know my iTunes library would have come from songs I was willing to purchase...which is probably why I only have ~900 songs. That's good enough for me. Some old tunes trump the crap put out these days. It will never get old.

I know a ~dollar here and there for music can add up, but at least it's something you enjoy. Ever calculate how much money you've spent on gas for a year? Don't! You'l want to cry.

02-04-2012, 09:22 AM

Originally Posted by iggibar

Ever calculate how much money you've spent on gas for a year? Don't! You'l want to cry.

1040 pounds per year actually.....

02-04-2012, 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by j0nb0y32

1040 pounds per year actually.....

Mine is around $2800 for normal driving, not including trips. That should be about 1770 pounds. I wish I had a diesel.

02-04-2012, 10:18 AM

I don't have that extensive a collection. Did a quick estimate and it comes out to about $1400 USD over about 45 yrs purchasing which is about $31 a year.

Will admit, that many of those years I wasn't actively buying music, especially during the interval between CDs first appearing and the players becoming reasonably priced.
When the CD first appeared (along with $1000+ players) I immediately quit buying vinyl, refusing to invest in an obsolete medium. For a long time after that I would buy an occasional CD against the day when I bought my first CD player.

Honestly, I am doing that now to a certain extent with Blu-ray. Don't have a player yet, but when a movie comes out that has a combo pack (Blu-ray and DvD together) I will often buy it.

02-04-2012, 10:21 AM

I have all my eMusic and iTunes downloads and ripped CDs on a 3TB external hard drive. No stray songs, all full-length albums or EPs. Catagorized by genre > band/artist > album > song. According to Songbird, I have a total of 237,376 songs on 18,681 albums.

Going by the .99 cents per song, the value is self explanatory. Going by the average price of a CD at $14.99, the value would be $280,028.19

02-04-2012, 11:02 AM

Originally Posted by Spellbinder

I have all my eMusic and iTunes downloads and ripped CDs on a 3TB external hard drive. No stray songs, all full-length albums or EPs. Catagorized by genre > band/artist > album > song. According to Songbird, I have a total of 237,376 songs on 18,681 albums.

Going by the .99 cents per song, the value is self explanatory. Going by the average price of a CD at $14.99, the value would be $280,028.19

christ on a bike!!!! hope you have strong shelves

02-04-2012, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by iggibar

Mine is around $2800 for normal driving, not including trips. That should be about 1770 pounds. I wish I had a diesel.

agreed

02-04-2012, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by j0nb0y32

christ on a bike!!!! hope you have strong shelves

About half of the actual CDs are no longer here. many were sold in '08-'09 ago during an 18 month layoff from work. Others got lost in a move and some got scratched and were not usable any longer. Nevertheless, I'm glad I still have the digital copies on the external.

02-04-2012, 11:23 AM

Originally Posted by j0nb0y32

crikey! so, without giving your age away, how much a year is that you've spend on tunes?

I've been buying CD's since very shortly after their consumer release... These days I MIGHT spend about $300/yr (including purchases for my kids). In college, and just after? I had a 2 CD a paycheck habit.

What I wish I had still, thanks to a nasty ex-gf, were all my bootlegs.

02-04-2012, 12:38 PM

I have 2180 tracks in my library. Roughly 1/3 of them are purchased online, the rest are ripped from CDs. So, roughly 726 songs purchased from iTunes. At an average cost of $1.05/track (I buy some from Amazon Music, and bought quite a few before iTunes started going up to $1.29/track) that's 762.30 total cost for digital music, which I've been buying pretty much exclusively since maybe 2004? So, over 8 years, that would amount to $95.25/year.

Let's say I'd bought that music on CDs, being forced into the buying the entire album, rather than just one track. There's about 15 tracks on average, or 48 CDs. At an average cost of about $15 per CD, that would come out to $720. That may make it look like digital music is a whole lot more expensive than traditional retail music, but take this into account...

Not all of those tracks are "desirable", since I'm forced into buying 12-15 tracks at a time, with maybe only a 1/3 of those tracks being what I set out to buy in the first place. So, given that conservative assumption of 1/3 of the tracks being desirable, let's say that I'd need to buy 3 times the number of CDs to get to the number of desired tracks.... so, 144 CDs at an average cost of $15 is $2160.

Given that very un-scientific assessment, I'd say iTunes' pricing model is very advantageous. Probably not so much for the recording labels, who have benefitted greatly from the "album model" over the years, but certainly a good deal for the consumer.

02-04-2012, 02:30 PM

I think my mind would bleed if I tried to calculate all of the music I've purchased, from digital to CDs to vinyl (we'll leave the cassettes out of it.) I know it's a large amount, and being that I hate numbers and love trying new music...we'll just leave it at that.

Here's my new thing, however: Spotify. While many argue that it's a waste since I don't have any "real estate" after I cancel my subscription, I can listen to thousands of songs I'd like to at any given time without having to buy the CD--or single song on iTunes. So, it's a toss-up. I've moved to that, since I have whims of wanting to listen to cruddy pop songs as well as going back to my punk and rockabilly music, and this gives me the option to do so without having to transfer everything to all of my devices or buy every song I'm looking for.