1. Quick links
2. Editor's picks
3. FAQ
4. Shopping tips
5. How we choose
6. Why trust us
7. Last year's deals
Black Friday has officially finished, but your chances of grabbing a cheap pair of quality studio monitors haven't. There's still plenty of sales action lingering in the wake of Cyber Weekend, so it isn't too late to get a great deal on this crucial component of music making.
I've used loads of monitoring systems over the years from pokey rooms at home through to professional-level main monitors. I've always been a huge fan of Yamaha's HS Series, and you can still bag up to $125 off them over at Sweetwater.
You can also bag some great savings at Musician's Friend, who are boasting savings of up to 50% on monitors in their Black Friday sale. It includes discounts on Adam Audio, Focal, PreSonus, and JBL, so plenty to sink your teeth into.
We're not sure when these deals will be ending so if you're looking for a big saving now's the time to act. Below you'll find links to all the sales that are still live at the time of writing, as well as a handful of suggestions from the team here at MusicRadar.
Black Friday studio monitor deals: Quick links
Below you'll find all today's best Black Friday studio monitor sales:
Amazon: Studio monitor deals
B&H Photo: Loads of studio savings
Guitar Center: Up to 50% off
Musician's Friend: Up to 60% off
Reverb: Up to 80% off
Sweetwater: Up to 80% off
Editor's picks
Black Friday studio monitor deals: FAQ
When will the Black Friday studio monitor deals land?
For 2023, the Black Friday monitor deals will officially arrive on Friday, November 24 - the day after Thanksgiving and less than a month before Christmas. As usual, the deals will extend across that weekend (also known as Cyber Weekend) before the Cyber Monday music deals finish the event with a bang on Monday 27 November.
Now, we've covered Black Friday for long enough to know that many of the best Black Friday studio monitor deals will emerge in the weeks leading up to the big day, some as early as mid-October - and better yet, many deals stick around well after the event and into December. If a pair of monitors is a bit rich for someone's Christmas present, we have more affordable ideas in our guide to the best Christmas gifts for musicians.
What deals should I expect?
We’ll be keeping a close eye on the big music retailers throughout October and November, scouring the internet for the very best Black Friday studio monitor deals we can find.
Based on last year's evidence, the Thomann Black Friday sale, Guitar Center Black Friday sale, Sweetwater Black Friday sale, and Musician's Friend Black Friday sale are the places to go if you are looking for a tasty deal on a new pair of monitors. Every year we see stellar discounts applied to all categories of monitors, from portable powered speakers, to high-end studio workhorses.
We've been covering the Black Friday music deals for years now, so you can rest assured our teams will be hunting down the best offers before anyone else and sharing them with you first.
Here's a flavour of the types of deals you can expect to see this year.
- Single item - A single product with a great discount
- Site-wide discounts - A single discount percentage on a large range of products across a site
- Discount codes - Load your basket to a certain value and redeem a discount code for money off your basket contents
- Added value deals - These include multi-buy discounts, or additional products or software for free when you buy certain items
Studio monitor shopping tips for Black Friday
Got your eye on a pair of monitors and wondering whether Black Friday is the time to buy? Here are a few tips from our personal experience that will ensure you're ready to strike if the gear you want is up for grabs:
1. Streamline your current gear - Do you have enough space in your collection for new gear? This is the first thing to address before you buy anything. If the answer is no, then could you offload some gear you don't use to make room? Even better, doing this can help generate funds for some new gear, so it's well worth going through this process.
2. Set your goals - What do you want to achieve with your music over the next 12 months or so? Do you want to gig more? Learn a new instrument? Or finally record your songs? Now could be the time to invest in gear that helps you fulfill your musical aspirations.
3. Create a wishlist early - The most sensible way to take advantage of this year's Black Friday studio monitor deals is to know in advance what you’re looking for. This will make searching much easier, rather than having to trawl through loads of deals you don’t want to find the ones you do, or pondering things you don't need. This also helps you keep your focus during Black Friday weekend, as there will be a lot of noise in your feed.
4. Sign up to mailing lists - In addition to bookmarking this page, we'd recommend signing up to mailing lists of your favourite retailers now to get the jump on the best deals when they do come around.
How we choose the best Black Friday studio monitor deals
First and foremost, we are music creators ourselves, and we want to match like-minded folk with the right products for them. We review gear throughout the year, which gives us a great overview on what's great and what isn't, forming the backbone of our recommendations.
For us to recommend a deal on music gear it has to be a product we rate that’s a genuinely great price or part of a truly fantastic bundle. Because we see the prices of items year-round, we're also able to spot when a retailer increases the RRP to the launch price to try and make it look like a better deal than it really is.
For that reason, it's important that we only recommend retailers where you will have a positive shopping experience. We're only going to recommend you somewhere we'd be willing to shop ourselves, which is why you'll typically see us linking out to bigger retailers in the music industry.
Why you can trust us
We spend a lot of our time scouring music retailers for fantastic deals on our favorite music gear. Not only is it our job to research and recommend the best gear in our buyer’s guides and reviews, but we’re also dedicated to helping musicians get the best deals on the stuff they need, too. After all, the only thing better than New Gear Day is New Gear Day with a hearty discount.
We cover a lot of the big sales events throughout the year, including Memorial Day, 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day, and we have a good view on which products are likely to receive the biggest discounts and when, the prices they’ve been in the past and which deals are genuinely worth a look.
