Why I'm spending less on music

It looks like we'll be moving and the house is currently being tidied as a result. I realised during this process that a lot of the CDs I've bought aren't actually in shelves where you might expect them to be, but instead are lurking around the computer. And that got me to thinking. I do have music only in digital form, most usually when a physical copy isn't available, but how exactly does my physical music collection so far shape up? And what might it tell me about my buying habits and how they would evolve in a digital only world?

The results are interesting and may add another piece to the jigsaw of why music sales are on the decline.

This doesn't cover digital-only artists in my collection, nor does it cover artists whose CDs are elsewhere, but from the number of CDs I've packed, I believe it to be a significant enough sample of the music I own. Singles are not included (in fact I own very few of those in physical form) but the figures are obtained from adding together the number of albums and EPs I own for each artist.

The rating system
The first thing I had to do was come up with a rating system for the music I own. Whilst this is based loosely around the rating system I use for my main blog posts, I've also weighted it towards the likelihood of a purchase of more music from that artist, based on the purchases previously made.


Bit of a disaster really. Seems the only tracks I liked were whatever I'd heard before I got the album. Doesn't rule out buying singles in future, but it will probably take a lot to convince me into an album.


Not bad, not great. Maybe the odd track I like, maybe the odd track I dislike, but in the main it's nice background take-it-or-leave-it music. Probably not going to go out of my way for a new purchase here, but when I've got spare money there's a chance I might buy something (but it will have to grab my attention first).


Liking about half, with most (if not all) of the rest as take-it-or-leave-it. Likely to buy more but might not. Depends on the mood I'm in, the money available and what I hear in advance of the release.


A few tracks here and there I'm not so fond of, but I'm in love with the majority. Unless there's a change of musical direction, I'll be looking to buy more.


Struggling to find anything that fits the take-it-or-leave-it category, never mind tracks I dislike. This is pure love - give me more!

The breakdown
Having decided on a rating system, I then proceeded to assign each artist to a rating. I also counted the number of CDs I own for each of the artists in question and applied some ranges. Here's what I found

One star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                19
2-4                              2
5-9                              0
10+                             0

Two star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                29
2-4                              8
5-9                              0
10+                             0

Three star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                5
2-4                           14
5-9                             6
10+                            1

Four star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                2
2-4                             4
5-9                             1
10+                            1

Five star artists

Cds Owned           Number of artists
1                                0
2-4                             0
5-9                             2
10+                            1

In addition to the above I found 4 compilation albums, but I'm obviously not including these in the main count as they cover multiple artists.

The conclusions
First of all, wow. I've found CDs from nearly 100 different artists lurking in the vicinity of my computer rather than with the rest. I'd make a guess there's nearly the same again in the CD rack. I've only been collecting music in CD format for about 15 years, though I obviously have some that were originally released earlier than this due to getting back catalog items. As a rough estimate, that means I've been buying an average of 2 CDs a month over the past 15 years, which puts me firmly in music lover territory.

As might be expected, in general I only own one CD for any artist I've rated as one star, whereas the more stars, the more CDs I'm likely to own for an artist. It's also not unreasonable to expect that some of the 3 star artists may gain a star (or two?) over time, particularly if I don't own more than one or two of their albums at present. (also possible for other artists, though less likely if they have less than 3 stars at present)

But for the rather shocking conclusion of why it looks like even a music lover like me will be spending much less on music in future, you need to understand the change that the swap to digital is having on me.

My digital future
When I start to look at some of the dates on the CDs, it's clear that my buying habits have already started to change. For starters, I'm actually quite shocked at the percentage of artists I rated at 1-2 stars out of the total artist CDs owned, but sorted by date I'm seeing a noticeable decrease in my purchases of these over time. Some of that is due to the financial crisis of the past few years, but not all. The internet is clearly having the effect of making me more picky about the albums I actually buy, because I'm now using the likes of streaming services and Youtube when I haven't already rated an artist as 4 stars or more to listen to what's on offer first.

Based on the above information, if the CD were to vanish tomorrow, I predict the following would happen in my case.

1. I'll only be buying full albums for about 10% of the artists where I'd have considered buying an album in the past. (4-5 star artists)
2. About 25% of the artists where I would have considered an album purchase in the past, will likely land up selling about half the tracks on that album to me instead. (3 stars)
3. Approximately 40% of the artists where I would have considered an album purchase in the past will likely land up selling only one or two tracks from that album to me. (2 stars)
4. The remaining 25% will likely only sell the occasional track that I've heard and hence know I like. (1 star)
5. I'll almost certainly start buying the occasional track I hear and like from other artists where I haven't considered a CD before.

This is bad news for artists. Here in the UK most artist albums can be bought for £6.99-8.99, but single tracks are usually 99p each. Assuming 10 tracks per album, it looks like my money won't stretch as far if I move to a track based rather than album based purchase system, doesn't it? But it turns out that's not the real problem.

Leaning towards the generous end of the spectrum, my album spend would be around £200 a year (24 albums at £8-9 each). Given the 10:25:40:25 split my new spend for a year on digital only would be as follows

£20-25 on full albums (2-3 artists)
£30 for half album sales (6 artists at 99p a track for 5 tracks)
£20-30 for a few tracks (~10 artists at 99p a track for 2-3 tracks)
£6 for occasional tracks ( 6 artists at 99p a track for 1 track)
Total: £76-91

Yes, you're seeing right. By switching to digital I'm automatically spending half or less of what I do currently. Even without taking aspects such as piracy or shared files from friends into account as ways of obtaining music instead.

But as stated above, digital opens up the possibilities for artists to sell tracks to me where they wouldn't have stood a chance of selling an album before. But to make up the difference, that means I need to be buying tracks from something like another 100 artists a year. (assuming I buy 1 track at 99p per artist). That means I need to hear another 2 new tracks every week that I like enough to want to buy (think of it as the track needing to hit the equivalent of a 4 or 5 star rating on my scale before I'll consider buying). And at the moment I can say for a fact that doesn't happen.

So it looks like I'm heading towards spending maybe 75% of what I do currently if I completely switch away from buying music on a physical album basis. And then only if I can find an average of one extra track a week

But instead of looking for more new tracks to buy, I could spend the difference on something like a £10 a month streaming service instead. But if I were to have an "all I could eat" stream that played exactly what I asked it to, what would be the point in buying anything? Going with this model, I'd still only be spending about 60% of that £200.

And another problem? I'm splitting my money 5 times as many ways as before, if I'm now supporting 124 artists a year rather than just 24. If I were spending the full £200, that means an artist getting more like £1.60 compared to the £8-9 before (minus overheads in both cases).  On average an artist would need 5 times as many people to buy their music for the same income under these rules. And if I'm only spending half what I used to, the reality is 10 times the number of people as before. Artists may now have a better chance at getting a share of a pot of money under digital, but equally there are only so many ways the pot can be divided before everyone essentially gets nothing. Basic result: the number of successful artists drops (as do the complete failures) but we increase the number of starving ones more or less tenfold.

Final thoughts
I'd be extremely interested to see the results of anyone else doing a similar experiment as I may not be typical of a music lover. I'd also be interested in the thoughts of the average consumer (Do you buy one CD a month or less, for starters?) as the idea of £10 a month streaming may actually mean these people paying more than before and picking up some of my slack. One thing is for sure, I need to be discovering a lot more music that I really, really like every single week, or I am clearly going to be spending a lot less on music than I have done previously. Clearly a very bad statement for a music lover to be making.