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Do you think this hobby is dying ??

Just read a few pages, and will put in my .02
The internet has ruined traditional retail. Most Hi-Fi stores are gone, even Best Buy doesn't cary anything mid-grade never mind higher end. Let's face it, hi-end audio is for the rich. In the 70's a full hi-end system was $10k completed. Now we're $10k in cables without ever having a system to hook them up to.

Kids are listing to much more music then we ever did. Spotify has opened the gates of music much like the internet has on all things. My kid is heavily into K-Pop. I'm happy they have finally discovered music. But also listens to much of the stuff I did in the 80's like the Cure, The Smiths, Depsh Mode, etc... They have almost every song at their fingertips. Kids are also reverting back to buying music on Cd & Vinyl . Both are making a huge comeback, records sales are at an all time high. Record stores are also starting to pop up everywhere.

But here's the thing. Most young kids do not care about fidelity, or quality. They grow up listing on crap ear buds. If they have records, or cd's they are happy with crappy $100 turntables, and $50 cd-players. My kid didn't want the vintage system I put in, asked me to remove it to be replaced with a $80 all in one cd player from Amazon with crap built in speakers.

Here is the sad thing, I do listen to music with my kid on my system, but my kid is always turning it down. It's just a very different way of doing it. Now we have the Chi-Fi stuff, and good cheap options. not sure if it's dying, it's just evolving and we are becoming the dinosaurs.
 
bluesky said:
1. that there has to be a musical 'MOVEMENT', an 'event' of sorts, and music will be the 'audio fuel' to power 'Movement'. Without the 'event' - no rebound to rally around.
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It seems highly doubtful that such a musical "movement" or "event" will ever happen in the foreseeable future. Much of the mainstream "Top 40" is not only entrenched but quite homogenized, processed and compressed, while the huge body of music outside of that is splintered into an unimaginable variety of not only genres, but sub-genres (& perhaps even sub-sub-genres) with great variance even within those categories. My guess is that you're thinking of the 1960s rock explosion which continued to reverberate throughout the 1970s and beyond, and is often thought of as a big musical (& cultural) movement that also resulted in a number of later sub-movements. But the many circumstances that created the 1960s were a resulting convergence of forces that had already begun emanating from the prior two decades which can never be duplicated again. This kind of cultural (& musical) confluence will almost certainly never happen again in America (or even the Western world as a whole) - we're just too divided now, so we might as well as just try to enjoy the resulting aftermath of all of it.

bluesky said:
It will just be a lot of lalala music - like it is now.
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:idea::rolleyes:

bluesky said:
"New music is about as deep as a birdbath" as David Crosby stated. It really isn't very 'deep'.
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Not somebody's opinion I would take to heart.

DesertRatt said:
Of course it is dying out. Right along with home auto repair, candle-making, sewing, quilting, and cursive writing.
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Becoming niche is more like it IMO for those and other things, as well as audio.
 
Little by little people around me are starting to realize they've been lied to about a lot of things. Some are fighting the temptation to comfortably conform and considering the unthinkable while others are doubling down on their superstitions. This goes for the deeper things but also hobbies like audio/music. I don't think I have any great system but a few people that have heard it are flabbergasted by it because all they know is computer speakers and Youtube as a source. It's mostly my wife's friends who come over, I just wish they wanted to hear something other than generic CCM or Italian restaurant music. I tried Fraction - Moonblood on them, pointing out the lyrics but they ran screaming!
 
Tom Brennan said:
All time? You are in error. About 50 million were sold last year, over 300 million in 1980.
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This is the great thing about Internet forums. You read what I wrote, and your only takeaway was taking what I said out of context.
Guess I just have to be more verbose. This is what I was trying to say, that buying music is coming back, record sales are going up.

www.billboard.com

U.S. Vinyl Album Sales Rise for 17th Straight Year — But Growth Is Slowing

In 2022, vinyl albums continued to be the leading format for album purchases with 43.46 million sold. But compared to recent years, growth is slowing.
www.billboard.com www.billboard.com
This is really interesting..
www.aei.org

Animated Chart of the Day: Recorded Music Sales by Format Share, 1973 to 2022

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www.aei.org www.aei.org
www.thecurrent.org

40 years of album sales data in two handy charts

Earlier this week we asked you to guess the highest-selling singles and albums to come out of Minnesota—and the answers to those two big questions will be revealed this Sunday night on the Current Presents: The Best-Selling Minnesota Artists of All Time. But before we get down to brass tacks, I...
www.thecurrent.org
 
But you said what you said ;)

And I am still looking for the "cool" kids you mentioned
 
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drjohnnyfeva said:
Vintage receivers are novelty items to most people nowadays. If you had one when you were younger or experienced one in your life, they become things of legend - novelties - and become sought after. In the same way today, younger people now in their teens and 20's find one or see one in the same manner older people did and the cycle continues. There is always going to be a demand for cool things and, as we all know, so many of these vintage electronics are COOL. They will continue to be.

But I think the real turn from these types of components for younger people is their size. Certainly the performance of today's much smaller components are similar to vintage gear and in some ways superior. I think this is particularly true with speakers. There seems to be a preference for sleeker components. And this is clearly similar to the turning away from console systems, separates guys my age (54) preferred - altho my experience has me always looking for one cool console to own.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but functionality often dictates the decision. A sleek system today with smaller components and speakers is often just more functional. I'd love to have some nice cabinet speakers from the 1970's - especially the ones my uncle gave me that were covered in gold velour or thick velvet material, they were a delightful mess in the best sense of being kitschy. I have no idea of the brand, but knowing him they were good quality. But nowadays, finding the right spot for them to function properly - other than just using them as end tables (lol) sort of makes my point about size being a limiting factor with these kinds of things anymore.
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The pedigree, as well as the size, can also play a role in vintage gear preference.
 
drjohnnyfeva said:
I think you're referring to me...

I think the hobby is cool. I notice that there are a lot of people here with similar interests and that's cool. Cool finds cool. Nothing too deep.
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It's been my experience in the last 50ish years in this hobby it mostly geeks, nerds maybe even freaks into it at the level most are here. Not much "cool" going on ;)

I am definitely a nerd, always have been :thumbsup:

:beerchug:
 
GChief said:
It's been my experience in the last 50ish years in this hobby it mostly geeks, nerds maybe even freaks into it at the level most are here. Not much "cool" going on ;)

I am definitely a nerd, always have been :thumbsup:

:beerchug:
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Couldn't agree more. Maybe cool could be replaced with interesting. ;) :beerchug: My kids think I'm a geek with all my StarWars, Pro Wrestling, and cartoon sh!t I have around. I think I'm cool. :)
 
Judging from the, ahem, aged appearance of listeners and enthusiasts at various audio shows, I think hi fidelity audio that is in general oriented around separate (or “integrated“) components, used principally to reproduce recorded music, is definitely in a long, slow decline. I wish this were not so, but I’m afraid it is. Like many on this forum, I use my system for movies and tv as well as music, but those sources are only rarely of such quality as to need hi fidelity equipment to be enjoyable. A decent sound bar will sound pretty good, maybe good enough to have gotten most of what most of those non- musical sources have to offer in the first place. The high end components make them sound better, but not enough, I think (or maybe I don’t think?), to make one spring a lot of the ready if a reasonable facsimile of music is not the front and center aim. And I’m sure individuals will vary in defining “reasonable“, but still, I think that’s the goal, no matter how elusive. Sorry for the long sentences.
 
Bob Dylan had an appropriate line from an early album:

"Those not busy being born are busy dying."

A bit depressing but there's some truth to it.
 
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