Vote

It is just a guess. I never keep track, probably don't want to. I wish it could be more but the selections just aren't there anymore.

I chose the $2500—$5000 designation for my vote with the caveat that my wife constantly reminds me that we "can't eat vinyl."

Currently, I am spending very little because I have bought so much in the past. I have a lot to listen to. Buy only SACDs now.

Without actually figuring up (that would be too much like work), I would say around $500 per year—97% on aluminum discs and 3% on downloads (legal only!).

$500 to $1000 I think, or it might be $1000 to $2500, but don't tell my wife! It's hard to believe I spend that much when there is so little worth buying, but I've just spent about $200 in the last month on vinyl alone. So, possibly it's actually $2500 to $5000. I don't want to think about it.

Mostly LPs.

Probably a grand or more, but with the decreasing sources for buying those hard copies, it probably will drop. The store sites locally are pathetic in what they offer, and I lost my favorite online site. And, I won't download albums, I WANT A HARD COPY, DAMN-IT!

I spend a few hundred bucks a year on music. I'd buy more, but imports are so much more money than local (?) CDs. I'm still using my iTunes gift cards from Xmas.

If I had more free time, I'd buy even more. But as it is now, I have to scrimp and scrape for listening time.

I'm in the fortunate position that I live in a place where $500 US will buy me over 100 (new and copyrighted) CDs. But even if I had to pay $10 per disc, I probably wouldn't spend more. In fact, I think I'd spend less. It's the low price that lets me experiment and discover new music.

I buy what I can't burn, especially classical, old fashioned r'n'r and so on, CD singles, limited editions...

The next question should be how much do you spend on live performances? I budget $100 per month for recorded music but I exceed that budget. As long as it stays around $2000 per year I feel that I am under control. That must be tempered by my collection of music of over 50 years and my son's influx of contemporary music each month.

CDs: $200. LPs: $400. Blank media: $175. Downloads: $0.

I buy about a dozen CDs every month, but most of them are $12 or less. As a classical music fan, I can find great older and even new discs (on Naxos, for example) in that price range. Even so, if I had to add up all my purchases ($2000?), the total would be less than what many Stereophile readers spend upgrading one component. I'd rather have the music.

I buy 200-300 LPs per year, so I must spend about $1000.

Probably too much, but I figure somewhere between $1500 and two grand. Ouch. Can you say intervention?

It would be much higher if I could find more discs I liked.

It gets harder and harder to find music worth owning. To many American Idol wannabes and no nothing producers.

Can't find anything I really want to buy. Actually I don't have the time to listen like I used to. Plus I'm probably not in the right demographic. Most of the artists I like have stopped producing new music and seem to prefer touring instead. They probably can make more money anyways.

Not as much as I wish I could.

I have not finished my music collection yet.

I would spend 10 times that if I had the money, but I need to ask record companies to realize that prices need to be more affordable, or else this business will be history in 20 years. I don't steal music, but teens do, and that is no good. But teens spend their dollars on cell phones now, not on music.

My answer won't get your advertising staff much business. Over $20,000? Now there are some misplaced priorities.

But my answer could be a lie. (I don't pirate CDs, though, for whatever reason.)

I have no idea. Never really thought about it.

Now that I think of it, I spend more money on music than on my (not exactly high-end) system. Not on purpose, but that's the right thing to do!

around 50 new CDs every year

Maybe a supplementary question could be "How much more than you can sensibly afford do you spend on music per year?"

Apart from Internet shopping, for real value I go bargain-hunting to two second-hand shops who buy-in collections of CDs. This effectively doubles the bang for each buck.

I think record reviews are just fine in your stereophile mag.