How much does it cost to build a home music studio?

Inside the Building a Home Music Studio series, I design home music studio setups at a wide variety of budget levels, everything from hobbyist setups costing a couple hundred dollars to multi-thousand dollar professional quality recording systems.

This article focuses on lower budget setups for writing music at home. Professional quality recording, mixing, and mastering setups can be built at home as well, but they require some additional considerations, and are covered in this article.

The Home Studio Gear Guide is my comprehensive resource that has all of my recommended studio gear, all in one place and regularly updated.

How much does it cost to build a home music studio?

Building a home music studio for under $200

At the very lowest budget levels, I tend to recommend portable recorders instead of computers for recording music. They can be a bit easier to set up and use, and at this price point we want to lean into that simplicity and convenience. Think of recording at this level as a sketchbook: we want a cheap, simple setup that lets us get our ideas down quickly, and we’re willing to make significant sacrifices in sonic quality to achieve that goal.

Never underestimate the power of using a musical notepad that doesn’t require you to turn on a computer or take a phone out of your pocket. The lack of Internet connectivity (and its associated outside distractions) means that a portable recorder can add additional focus to your writing process. That might make it a better choice than using the free Voice Memo app on your phone to achieve a similar level of quality and convenience.

Building a home music studio for under $300

At this price point, we start to get into using computers to record music. But, we still want to keep our costs as low as possible, and that means there’s still some quality and feature sacrifices in our setup.

This build features all of the interfaces, mics, cables, and monitoring solutions to get started with computer based recording.

I wanted to show a build at this budget level for comparison, but I would not actually recommend buying at this price point. Don’t fall into the trap of stair-stepping up a price ladder; the entire music gear industry is built on consumers buying gear that’s honestly a bit too cheap as a first impulse purchase, growing out of that gear quickly, and then re-buying something different over and over again.

Instead, try to do your research and buy the right tool for the right job the first time: buy gear that you can grow into over at least a few years of learning music. It might be a little bit more expensive up front, but you’ll save money in the long run by not having to rebuy similar gear multiple times. My next build is just a little bit more expensive, but focuses on just that: a balance of price and value.

Building a home music studio for under $550

This is where I recommend most newbies start out with home recording if budget is your primary concern. At this price point, we can start to buy gear that’s easier to use and sounds better, but is still reasonably affordable. I attempt to hit a home studio sweet spot here: high-quality enough for the casual music hobbyist to grow into for many years of fun songwriting at home, yet not so expensive as to be cost-prohibitive for a hobby.

Building a home music studio for under $750

This is my second sweet spot build, and the price level I recommend shopping at for home songwriters who want to focus on quality, and can afford to spend a little more. We’ve got maximum value here: this studio gear should last you for many years in a home music studio setting, and it’ll be great sounding and easier to use the whole time you’re using it.

Building a home music studio for $2500

You may have noticed that we have a very large gap in price for this build. That’s because we’ve hit a deliberate aim point for gear manufacturers: most hobbyists aren’t willing to spend more than $1,000 on something they don’t know if they’ll stick with long term. So, this build is for people who think they might want to take it further than most do. It’s the beginnings of a professional level setup.

This gear would be appropriate for the very serious musician who wants to use their self-recorded tracks in a professional setting, perhaps by bringing them into a professional recording studio later on for further development.

Or, for the musician who wants to get into doing remote overdub sessions for money: recording professional quality tracks yourself at home, and then sending them off to a producer or composer to be mixed into a complete work.

Or, you might be getting more serious about the recording arts in general, and considering developing your casual music writing space into a professional recording studio space, to be operated as a business that generates income. When you’re ready to take that step, you’ll want to check out my article that details getting into recording at the professional level.