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Are you interested in opening a music store?
Maybe you love playing music and have dreamed of owning your own shop for years, but want to know how much money you can realistically make. Or perhaps you’re a current music store owner wondering how similar businesses stay profitable.
Either way, you’re asking: How much does a music store owner make?
Music stores come in many shapes and sizes, and earning potential depends on several key factors. If you take the time to understand what influences income — and the strategies you can use to your advantage — you can open a successful store or adjust your business model to increase sales.
In this blog, we’ll explain how much a music store owner can make, what affects these numbers, and how you can bring in more revenue for your business.
Let’s get started.
How Much Does a Music Store Owner Make? (And What Affects It)
The short answer: It depends.
Income can vary widely from one music store to another, even among shops with a similar sales volume.
Reports show that the average income for a U.S. music store owner typically falls between $25,000 and $80,000 per year. For comparison, a general U.S. retail store owner — across all industries — earns about $71,000 per year on average.
These are the factors that have the strongest impact on how much a music store owner makes.
Location and Local Market
Where your music store is situated plays a big role in both revenue and expenses. A store in an urban area with higher foot traffic is likely to see stronger sales, but rent tends to be more expensive. In a smaller town, lower traffic may mean fewer sales, but rent is typically more affordable.
When choosing a space, balance your budget with the level of customer traffic needed to sustain your business.
Retail vs. Service Revenue
Every music store is different. You might run a general shop or specialize in a particular instrument, like guitars, violins, or pianos. Some stores focus on selling instruments and accessories, while others offer lessons, instrument repairs, and rentals.
Adding services creates recurring revenue from lessons and rental fees, increasing your earning potential. It also helps you build customer loyalty, making your store a one-stop shop for all their musical needs.
Related Read: 7 Music Retail Industry Trends You Need To Know [Updated for 2026]
Used vs. New Gear Sales
When deciding on your store’s product mix, consider offering used instruments. Supplying pre-owned options helps reach a wider audience and encourages first-time buyers. While they typically sell for less than new gear, you can often get them for cheaper and resell them at a higher profit margin, increasing your bottom line.
Understanding Your Operating Costs (and Why They Vary So Much)
Even if your store brings in plenty of revenue, high costs can eat into your profits. Knowing your expenses and how much each one costs allows you to make adjustments to reduce them.
Here are some of the key expenses every music store faces.
Rent and Utilities
If you want to sell instruments in person, you need a physical location. Look for a space that meets your music store’s needs at a price you can afford.
Rent varies greatly depending on the size and location of the building, but a recent report found that standard monthly rent for a music store is around $3,500, with utilities averaging about $400.
If you already have a location, consider how well it suits your business. Is the space too cramped for your inventory or too spread out for customers? If you have more room than you need, a smaller, more affordable location might be a better fit.
You can also cut utility costs with energy-efficient lights and smart thermostats on preset schedules. Using only the space and energy your store needs helps lower expenses without sacrificing comfort.
Inventory
You have to get your inventory from somewhere, and most retail music stores purchase it from online wholesale vendors. As you research suppliers, look for high-quality instruments at reasonable prices that suit your target market.
Working with multiple vendors can protect your business from supply chain disruptions. For example, you might get trumpets and trombones from one vendor and clarinets and saxophones from another. If one vendor experiences delays, only certain items are affected, not your entire store.
Once you’ve chosen your suppliers, decide which types of products to stock. If your focus is families and young students, affordable instruments are key. For professional musicians, you likely need to invest in higher-end, professional-grade instruments.
Regardless of your audience, look for items with strong profit potential. Estimated profit margins for music store products are:
As you plan your inventory and quantities, calculate potential profit based on your investment to make informed stocking decisions.
Staffing
Pay your employees fairly to retain them and improve the quality of their work. Look for ways to schedule staff more efficiently.
If you run a large store with a wide selection of instruments and services like repairs and lessons, you’ll need a bigger team to ensure all customers get the help they need. Smaller or more specialized stores, like a guitar-only shop, can operate with fewer team members at any given time.
Determine the minimum number of associates who can responsibly manage the store, and schedule them accordingly to control payroll costs.
Cross-training employees to handle multiple tasks means you can accomplish more with fewer staff. Ongoing training not only improves skills but also helps reduce wages without compromising service.
Related Read: 4 Staff Incentives That Work for Music Store Sales
How To Increase Music Store Sales
Already own a music store but want to boost your income? Follow these strategies to increase your sales.
Use Data To Make Smarter Decisions
To meaningfully improve your operations, you first need reliable data. The best way to track it is with a cloud-based point of sale (POS) system. Modern POS platforms monitor inventory levels and provide access to detailed sales reports with customizable views. When you study this information carefully, you can uncover insights that lead to better business practices.
If you carry a wide range of instruments, it’s easy to lose track of how each one is performing. Maybe you have a small ukulele section, and your POS data shows it’s consistently been selling out. Using this insight, you can place larger orders to meet customer demand.
Improve Inventory Turnover
Fine-tuning your inventory management helps you root out inefficiencies. Anyone can buy items and put them on the shelves, but by paying close attention to sales reports, you can perfect your product mix to maximize revenue.
Use sales data to guide your orders — buy more of what sells quickly and move slow-selling items through sales or clearance. Stubborn inventory ties up cash, but once it moves, you free up room and budget for new items.
Let’s say you stock all sorts of music gear, but you find that brass instruments like trombones, tubas, and French horns consistently sell slowly. You might hold off on reordering them and use that budget to stock more popular instruments like guitars and drums. Adjustments like these help your inventory better match customer demand and improve turnover.
Plan for seasonal fluctuations, too. Late summer and early fall are typically the busiest times as students start a new school year. Stock popular school band instruments — flutes, clarinets, saxophones — in advance so there’s plenty of selection.
Over time, you’ll gain a better sense of sales patterns and have more historical sales data to work with. Review past sales to find slow weeks or months and reduce order quantities accordingly to avoid overstocking.
Add Music-Related Services
Offering services in addition to retail is a smart way to boost sales. Some music shops report that non-instrument revenue — like rentals and lessons — can account for 30–40% of total income.
Here are a few services you can provide:
- Rentals: There’s a large market for rentals, especially if your store is near schools with band programs. Rental fees typically cover the instrument cost within about a year, after which all rental fees become pure profit.
- Repairs: Skilled repair technicians can produce high profit margins with relatively low overhead — up to 60–80%.
- Lessons: Teaching lessons creates recurring revenue and often drives additional sales of instruments, accessories, and sheet music.
- Consignment: Selling third-party used instruments on consignment adds variety, attracts collectors, and generates extra sales. Music stores usually take a 10–20% commission on consignment items.
Adding these services takes effort, new skills, and sometimes more staff. If it feels overwhelming, start with one service and expand gradually. With experience, broadening your offerings can significantly increase profits.
Related Read: How To Build Relationships With Local Music Teachers: 11 Tips
Increase Revenue and Profit With Music Shop 360
How much a music store makes depends on a variety of factors — where your store is located, what you sell, and whether you offer additional services.
To support these strategies, you need a POS system designed for your industry. Music Shop 360 is a cloud-based POS solution built specifically for music stores.
Our software includes inventory management tools, detailed sales reports, and modules for rentals, lessons, and repairs. It also offers payment processing for a convenient customer experience.
Mark Dickey, general manager of Lee’s Music in Price, Utah, says, “[Music Shop 360] was compiling all of these tools that made it realistic for us to be competitive with the big stores.”
“Using the different systems to keep track of our work orders, being able to do rental contracts on our own, to do layaways… send out payments and invoices all from one place, it’s made everything super efficient and increased our sales because we can move on things quickly.”
To see what Music Shop 360 can do for your business, schedule a demo today!
