Stereophile
New member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2013
- Messages
- 442
- Thread Author
- #1
<p><img class="story_image" src="http://www.stereophile.com/images/2005revive.promo_.jpg" /></p> When I <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/asweseeit/352/index.html">became <i>Stereophile</i>'s editor in 1986</a>, the median age of the magazine's readership was the same age as I was then, 38; <i>ie</i>, half the readers were younger than 38, half older. According to our most recent reader survey, the median reader age is now 48, meaning that in the intervening 19 years, that median reader has aged at half the rate of the rest of us. A nice trick. But older that reader certainly has become, which has led to cries of doom from some quarters of the audio industry.
<p>
The fear is that as members of the baby-boom generation increasingly look backward at their 50th birthdays, they will equally increasingly remove themselves from the market for two-channel audio components. Couple that fear with the observation that younger generations neither appear to value quality nor appear to be willing to devote extended periods of time to listening to music without multitasking, and it would seem that the customer base for the high-end audio industry will soon, literally, die out.
</p><p>
And, as <i>Stereophile</i> correspondent Ken Kessler wrote in an article in the September 2005 issue of UK trade journal <i>Inside Hi-Fi & AV</i>, the high-end audio industry faces obstacles in reaching its existing customer base. Ken's thesis is that, whereas acknowledged luxury markets exist in many fields, from watches to cars to handbags to pens, audio alone seems to be associated with a sense of consumer guilt
[Source: http://www.stereophile.com/content/how-revive-high-end-audio]
<p>
The fear is that as members of the baby-boom generation increasingly look backward at their 50th birthdays, they will equally increasingly remove themselves from the market for two-channel audio components. Couple that fear with the observation that younger generations neither appear to value quality nor appear to be willing to devote extended periods of time to listening to music without multitasking, and it would seem that the customer base for the high-end audio industry will soon, literally, die out.
</p><p>
And, as <i>Stereophile</i> correspondent Ken Kessler wrote in an article in the September 2005 issue of UK trade journal <i>Inside Hi-Fi & AV</i>, the high-end audio industry faces obstacles in reaching its existing customer base. Ken's thesis is that, whereas acknowledged luxury markets exist in many fields, from watches to cars to handbags to pens, audio alone seems to be associated with a sense of consumer guilt
[Source: http://www.stereophile.com/content/how-revive-high-end-audio]