Re: Could it be....

[Bob Nelson <raccoonradio@yahoo.com>]

--- Howard Glazer <hmglaz@webtv.net> wrote:
[could it be]
> ... that the downturn in recorded music sales over
> the past few years
> could be a result of the graying of the baby boomer
> demographic? All the
> boomers, after all, are over 40.

I'm not sure where the boomer generation officially
ended-- 1960? 1964? I was born in '62 (will be 41
next month) and do consider myself a boomer rather
than an X-er.

And I'm not sure how most X-ers feel, but this boomer
prefers buying CDs to downloading music off the Net
(even if my computer _did_ have a CD burner, I still
would buy rather than download...)

 A good number of
> them are over 50.
> Since most music is purchased by people in their
> teens through thirties,
> it would seem to me that music sales would have
> nowhere to go but down. 

And how much "new" stuff gets bought by the over
40 crowd? How much of it is re-issues, box sets,
etc.; stuff recorded long ago. Live albums or
"best ofs" by the artists of our generation
(McCartney's live CD; the Stones' "Forty Licks",
etc.)

I'm a lot more likely to buy an older album by
Tom Rush than a new album by Avril Lavigne. (Though
I could see myself buying _some_ newer artists,
like that relatively new bluegrass band, Nickel
Creek.)

> The record companies, apparently, don't take the
> population shift into
> account, as they continue to push heavily
> researched, meticulously
> planned youth-targeted product at a youth market
> that's just not as
> large a part of the total population as the baby
> boomers were during the
> industry's boom years.

They definitely push toward younger people-- and
certainly movies are marketed the same way. And:
ever get to a movie theater a few minutes before the
previews start and you hear the latest teenybopper
stuff over the sound system? That's who's going to
movies and-- they think-- that's who's buying
CDs. And listening to them (or ARE they?) on
CHR radio, etc.

(Or do younger people today get exposed to new
music over the Net rather than by listening to
CHR?)