Members Anderton Posted July 7, 2016 Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 Seems like it's the baby boomers, those former great consumers of music, who are dragging the system down...and contrary to popular belief, it's the younger demographic that's actually paying for and supporting music. Check out this article from Business Insider UK. Here's a teaser: "There is a dominant narrative around music that has prevailed since the Napster days: young people don't pay for music. But research from Cowen's John Blackledge and Tim Arcuri shows the actual picture is a bit more complicated than that. The analysts found that 46% of US respondents ages 18-24 had paid for music in the past month, significantly higher than 45-54 (26%) and 65+ (12%). The data shows that, at every stage of adult life, as people get older, they are less likely to pay for music. Here is the full chart:" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted July 7, 2016 Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 "Less likely to pay for music." What does that mean? a - that they just don't acquire new music as often as they age, orb - that they still acquire new music, but acquire it by non-payment methods such illegal downloading, etc. All my personal observations for decades have confirmed my strong impression that as people age out of the 20s and 30s, they don't follow new music as closely, don't venture out into new musical territory and so on. Even my son says that, since his crowd graduated from college, most of them seem pretty uninterested in music in general. There are important exceptions, of course - but the rank and file seem to have "moved on" to TV series or remain stuck in gamerland. The people I talk about music with in my demographic - they almost all listen to Spotify or the equivalent for free and buy the very occasional CD or iTunes download and that's about it. Also - it's really the case that scads of young people are ready to sign up for the monthly cash drip for all sorts of things. If there's any convenience or cool factor involved at all, they buy in. Later, when facing situations like having kids or trying to pay off student loans, they might start canceling some of the things they still pay for and have maybe even forgotten about. But they are easy touches for subscribing to this and that, even if they hardly use whatever they've signed up for. nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 7, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 "Less likely to pay for music." What does that mean? a - that they just don't acquire new music as often as they age, or b - that they still acquire new music, but acquire it by non-payment methods such illegal downloading, etc. The article makes the case for it being "a," which sounds right to me. However in my case, although I'm part of the older demographic I seek out new music, but rarely pay for it. For example, I'll check out what's happening on Vevo or internet radio. At this point in my life I'm more interested in making music than listening to it, however I do like to keep on top of what's happening out in the real world. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted July 7, 2016 Author Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 And here's some more good news...Google with bring up lyrics with searches for specific songs, although it's disappointing the terms of the deal weren't disclosed, and how much will actually go to songwriters. However given that lyric sites rarely give anything to songwriters, this is a step in the right direction. From Snopes.com: "One of the more common forms of online searches comes from users looking for song lyrics, and for years a plethora of web sites have been profiting from providing that information to searchers. But song lyrics (save for very old songs) are typically copyright-protected commodities, and most sites offering them have neither licensed the rights to reproduce them nor paid any royalties to the rightsholders for using them. "However, Google users can now do an end run around such sites and ensure that musicians and publishers are properly compensated because the search giant has signed a multi-year licensing deal with Toronto-based LyricFind to display song lyrics in its search results. Typing a song title into Google's search box now pulls up the lyrics to that song, without the need for users to click through to a third-party web site." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 "Less likely to pay for music." What does that mean? a - that they just don't acquire new music as often as they age, or b - that they still acquire new music, but acquire it by non-payment methods such illegal downloading, etc. All my personal observations for decades have confirmed my strong impression that as people age out of the 20s and 30s, they don't follow new music as closely, don't venture out into new musical territory and so on. Even my son says that, since his crowd graduated from college, most of them seem pretty uninterested in music in general. There are important exceptions, of course - but the rank and file seem to have "moved on" to TV series or remain stuck in gamerland. I think it's most likely A. I am certainly in the older demographic, but I pay for a Spotify premium account every month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Notes_Norton Posted July 7, 2016 Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 I agree that when people get older they consume less music. After all, after amassing a life time of music, and with the changes in music being so drastic, there is no incentive to add to a happy collection. My father had a closet full of LPs. Many hundreds of them. But they were mostly big band, 40-s to 70s "pop" in the genre of Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Tony Bennett, etc., and light jazz albums. He continued to purchase an occasional new Sinatra or something he may have missed, but didn't want to buy rock albums. He had honed his tastes on Big Band music. Me? I have no desire to buy much modern music. I have 10,000 songs on my iPod culled from my collection, and I haven't digitized more than a quarter of my LPs. And I'm not attracted to much new music. Oh, songs come that I enjoy, but I rarely have a desire to own them. But most new music bores me. My tastes have grown with my age. EDO is too simplistic, Even some of my old music has become to simplistic for me, so an occasional play on the iPod is enough. Another song with the same chords and a similar melody line doesn't make it for me anymore. I went from 3 chord rock to blues to many phases of jazz and since I played classical in school I always had a taste for classical which I developed after I got bored with jazz. Lately, I buy symphonies, but I have most of my favorites. If I hear a better version (for me) played on the radio, I might acquire another, or if I hear a new work (new as in the sense or contemporary or new to me) that tickles my ears, it's off to Amazon to get the CD. I like hardware, it's a good backup and seems to last longer than a download. So at a few symphonic CDs per year, I'm one of those baby boomers who don't buy as much music as I used to. But I don't pirate any either. I have my own copyrights and I believe in "do unto others". Insights and incites by Notes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted July 7, 2016 Members Share Posted July 7, 2016 I think it's most likely A. I am certainly in the older demographic, but I pay for a Spotify premium account every month. Well, me too for that matter on both counts - Google Play $9.99 plus tax. So that's a $120 annual drip. Before the wave of streaming services came along, I dropped two or three times that annually on CDs, usually used. And I downloaded from eMusic, also, when eMusic still had a huge catalog with all the major labels, etc. eMusic had various price tiers and there were always special offers and such, but I typically paid on average $200 per year to those guys, too. So, say ten years ago, I bought music regularly to the tune of approx. $500-$600 per year. I have a lot of CDs, to say the least, plus legal downloads, some 20,000 tracks. And a couple hundred albums of old vinyl. Now I just pay for the premium streaming, plus the occasional classical or jazz CD. Anything else I either already own or I can just Google up via Play. So I don't acquire as much music, and I don't pay as much, both. But I have more access than my wildest dreams could have imagined in pre-digital days. Herein lies the secret to why the public doesn't give a $*&%$ about whether musicians make any money or their copyrights are violated, etc, etc, - for the public consumer of music, things are GREAT! nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted July 7, 2016 CMS Author Share Posted July 7, 2016 I'd go for [a]. I'm sort of a pre-baby-boomer (born 1943). I've purchased about five downloads and the only CDs I've added to my collection in the past 20 years or so are ones I've worked on or that have been given to me by artists. I do, however, listen to music on the radio, almost all of it over the Internet. But I'm not interested in buyng music I hear other than to the extent that I support a couple of the stations with an annual donation. That doesn't mean I don't like what I hear, it's just that I don't feel that there's value to me in owning product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.