Re: Could it be....

[SteveOrdinetz <steveord@bit-net.com>]

Howard Glazer wrote:
>... 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. 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.


Judging by all the screams about school overcrowding, I'd say 'taint 
necessarily so.  I've read that the current generation of school-aged kids 
is larger than the boomers.  Of course, culturally they're much more 
diverse than the boomers...not only in the sense of racially/national 
origin, but personal taste as well.  Music was a very uniting factor for 
the boomers...Gen Y (or whatever you want to call them) have no real common 
culture...the rap crowd has little to do with the rock crowd or the goths, 
etc.  Can anyone picture old-style Top 40 that played Johnny Mathis back to 
back with Led Zeppelin playing with today's teens?  They're a different 
generation with a completely different mindset...not simply a younger 
version of the boomers...much like the boomers were a totally different 
generation from their parents.



>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.


But they have no choice.  How many over 40 people do YOU know who have any 
particular interest (let alone passion) in new music?  When was the last 
time you bought a CD that wasn't a compilation or reissue of a classic album?


>And couldn't the crassly marketing-driven nature of much of the
>big-label product also be dulling the buying impulse?

I'd say the fact that the market fragmentation and changes in priorities 
has more to do with it.