$100k spent on music and $20k on the equipment or the other way around or 50/50 ?


Which one is closest to you ?
inna
I have a lot more money in music media than playback equipment. It's probably a factor of double, triple or more.

That said, if I were starting today, I would be heavily weighted on equipment and subscribe to one or more streaming services for content.
equipment is a few major purchases, while music is many small purchases over 55 years...
In my case so far, though it might change if I go into tape world , I spent three times more on the equipment. I don't need many records and cds.
My approach to this ratio has changed drastically just over the past couple of years and I know I'm not alone.  I have almost no interest in owning digital music anymore and greatly prefer streaming ("renting") it.  The exceptions are when certain titles aren't available to stream.  The only music I'm really interested in purchasing is vinyl - mainly focused on jazz first pressings that also have value as a collectible piece of history and with wonderful sonics to boot.  My mono 1st pressings on BlueNote, for example, have been going up in value a ridiculous amount in just the past 3 years.  Overall, I will continue spending way more on equipment upgrades than music purchases for the foreseeable future.
I virtually stopped buying digital as well, very rarely do I buy a cd or two. My CEC cd plaer is 20 years old but I see no good reason to upgrade it. When it breaks I will find something similar or a little better, no serious money will go into digital.
Analog is a completely different matter, cost of first pressings is up, cost of good master tape dubs is very high. So I anticipate a 50/50 split for the future.
Extremely difficult, yeah, but with one source and a lot of patience it can be.
Can't be sure of the exact prices and some pieces would very difficult to find, but here is my take on $20k system. 
Nottingham Spacedeck/Spacearm, new or used.
Goldring 1042 or Nagaoka MP-500 cartridge, new.
Depending on tube or solid state choice of electronic:
tube - Allnic H-1202 phono, used; solid state - Sutherland 20/20 phono, new.
Gryphon Diablo integrated, used. VAC Sigma SE integrated, used.
Kharma speakers, used.
Purist Audio cabling, used.

That should do it.
Took me a while, and still a rough estimate, but pretty sure music to equipment comes out even if by equipment you mean..... tone arm.
50 to 800 ratio for me. I have closer to 50 pieces of equipment and 800 albums of music. Is that good? The musics value is priceless and I tell the equipment 'you can be replaced'.
It truly doesn't matter.

View your audio equipment investment as having a kitchen you custom ordered.  Your wine and food are like the music media.

I'm sure you'd enjoy every bit of both, regardless of the investment ratio.
During last 6 months, I spent 18K$ on hardware.

But I also bought 400 red book CD at 800$.

Some of that are very good at performance and sound.

I may not need to spend any money on hardware and software for next 3 years.

I may buy more CD since it is easy to do bargain hunting on red book CD.


At $2 a piece cds are almost disposable, play them once and throw away what you don't like. Unless you buy too many and then throw away thousands of dollars.
With equipment one can literally spend millions, and some do.
I always have a tight yearly audiophile budget, but I can go over by 10% or so. I can also spend it all at once for five years ahead. This covers equipment. As for records and cds, I don't really need a budget, I usually buy 10 or so items per year for about $30 on average.
I had not spent money on audio hardware from Aug 2013 to July 2018 except inexpensive music sever ( Cocktail audio x12 700$).

During that time I had been crazy about photography.

Once I started updating the hardware, I have to get the sound that I want.

But now after spending 18K$ for 6 months, it is almost over.

Now I get the sound that I want from my 100K$ system.

For next 3 years, I will do some tube rolling or inexpensive tweaking.

But without any change of major equipment, it will not be costly maybe 1-2 K$ for a year.
White Hot Stamper Fleetwood Mac
Super Hot Stamper Peter Gabriel So
White Hot Stamper Don't Shoot Me I'm The Piano Player
Super Hot Stamper Taproot Manuscript

Valiant effort underway to rebalance the equation.
https://www.better-records.com/search_adv.aspx?sp=elton+john&option=s_name&min_price=1&m...