On 24/01/2011, Tom Fine wrote:
> No sales information I have seen confirms this. All information I've
> seen indicates that the high-volume music buyers are young and that
> music consumption trails off steadily into adulthood (mortgage-holder
> years) and does not return in old age (due to lost interest and/or
> encroaching deafness, I always assumed). A niche market of wealthy
> older enthusiasts does exist, but it's not where the big bux are made.
> However, the last time I saw demographic info was early in this
> century. I can't imagine there was a huge consumption shift in the
> last decade but I might be wrong on that. And, if there was, why is
> the industry hurting so much from young people losing interest?
>
> Here's another scary proposition for the music companies -- if young
> people aren't buying what they're selling and older people aren't
> interested in the new-release stuff, how many times can the companies
> re-sell the same old stuff to the older people? I know in my case, at
> this point, I'm satisfied with the versions I have of almost all
> "back-catalog" music and new purchases are additions to the
> collection, usually from the "back catalog" but a few new releases are
> of interest each year. So, once I bought the round of CD's, that was
> it, they can't re-sell me. There's no format on the horizon that will
> change that. Anyone with half a brain can rip their CD's to their iPod
> so only fools go and re-buy stuff as lossy digital files. There were a
> certain percent of these fools for a while, and I think that inflated
> the download business for a brief time, and now they're done and have
> all the music they want so it's growing at about 6%, which is a
> logical expectation.
>
I would put it this way: there is more good music around than ever
before, but sales of bad music have dropped to almost zero.
It was the sales of bad music that brought in the big money.
Regards
--
Don Cox
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