Oddly enough, I think I’m buying more now than I have in quite some time, primarily because excellent quality is being combined with very low cost. Just take a look at the MLP sets and the Callas EMI set. These are treasure troves of quality recordings at bargain basement prices! And I’m also just 3 months shy of Medicare age.
But it always has been my belief that it was the young that drive music sales: a new generation creating and listening to new music. But as others have mentioned, for reasons more numerous/complex to state here, exciting new music has not arrived on the scene for quite some time. The 1920s had jazz, the 1930s had swing, the 1940s had the war and Sinatra, 1950s had Elvis and Rock n Roll, the 1960s had The Beatles. And then we started to see the decline until we hit Rap which is talking to a beat. And what since then? Where is the motivation *to* by music.
In addition, the young have decided on how they want to consume (i.e., listen to) their music. Their’s is a virtual world. All is digital/electronic, nothing analog or physical. Here in San Francisco, I interact with this new generation all the time: they carry no money, they carry no books, they carry no music. It’s all cloud based and that’s partly by desire and partly by necessity. In San Francisco a 295-square-foot condo just sold for $415K, 39% over asking. Where you gonna store *any* CDs when all you have room for is a mini-fridge and a Murphy bed??
Yes, there are the reactionaries that hunt for vinyl. But they make up a microcosm of the new generation of music listeners.
DrG
> On Apr 15, 2015, at 12:37 PM, Louis Hone <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Hi Tom
>
> Interesting point you bring up. I see two factors related to this decline:
>
>
> Louis
>
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Reported in today's Wall Street Journal, with an equally depressing
>> graphic:
>>
>>
>> 5. Net-net, phyiscal media is now about 45% of total music sales, and
>> still losing ground. Streaming/subscription is the growth area. Downloads
>> are also sliding. The world of artwork, physical product and ownership of
>> one's purchased music is slipping away. Furthermore, recorded music appears
>> to be of declining value to an increasing world population with increased
>> spending power.
>>
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