High end audio is hanging on by its fingernails. Momentum and the tenacity of old coots is all that keeps it going at all. Many of our manufacturers will be following Richard Brown, Terry Cain and Jim Theil within the next decade and our consumer ranks will dwindle along a parallel with them.
I know this is bleak sounding and I'm sure I'll be accused of pessimism but ordinary life expectancy statistics bear me out. As much as we don't want to accept the fact, we aren't young anymore and we are not being replaced by the same ambition, opportunity and excitement that buoyed us through our heyday.
In the 1970s it was fashionable to own a stereo system and the typical middle class household went shopping and bought one. In the go-go 80s, under Reagan and the penny stock surge, high end audio came into being as a separate category. Yuppies arrived on the scene and Krell and BMW became symmetrical status symbols. This trend continued as those of us who really did enjoy the music acquired wealth and applied it to our hobby.
Nowadays, prices have soared due to the need of manufacturers to fish deeper in the same pool with every new model. And many customers have dropped out. We are putting our kids through college or fighting to keep our home or paying 2-3 times as much as we used to for health insurance, or have no health insurance with which to fend off the ravages of couch potato lifestyle. Many of us are broke or have chosen to distribute our shrinking disposable income differently or not at all. Eventually, you come to realize that there are things in your world that matter more than replacing that preamp you've had for 16 months just because something else has bought itself a better review.
It won't be long before most of us read the handwriting on the wall and stop pretending that the good times are coming back. They aren't.
High end audio is one of a few industries that hasn't been completely subsumed by corporate tsunami of the 21st century. Stay tuned.
As an aside that lends perspective to the times we live in, I'm watching the Fourmile Canyon fire in Colorado carefully. I lived there from 1986 to 1997 and my boys were born in our cabin there. Many of my former neighbors are still there and they have been evacuated. I've seen a few of them interviewed on television. They are shaken and they are anxious about whether or not their home is still standing. And they're worried about losing their photos and artifacts and heirlooms. Nobody seems too worried about their bicycles, stereo systems, big screens, RVs, etc. They are grateful that, while 170 homes have burned to the ground and 3500 people were forced to evacuate, there are no serious injuries, no fatalities and no one missing.
Maybe the biggest threat to the high end audio industry in 2010 is the re-ordering of our priorities.
I know this is bleak sounding and I'm sure I'll be accused of pessimism but ordinary life expectancy statistics bear me out. As much as we don't want to accept the fact, we aren't young anymore and we are not being replaced by the same ambition, opportunity and excitement that buoyed us through our heyday.
In the 1970s it was fashionable to own a stereo system and the typical middle class household went shopping and bought one. In the go-go 80s, under Reagan and the penny stock surge, high end audio came into being as a separate category. Yuppies arrived on the scene and Krell and BMW became symmetrical status symbols. This trend continued as those of us who really did enjoy the music acquired wealth and applied it to our hobby.
Nowadays, prices have soared due to the need of manufacturers to fish deeper in the same pool with every new model. And many customers have dropped out. We are putting our kids through college or fighting to keep our home or paying 2-3 times as much as we used to for health insurance, or have no health insurance with which to fend off the ravages of couch potato lifestyle. Many of us are broke or have chosen to distribute our shrinking disposable income differently or not at all. Eventually, you come to realize that there are things in your world that matter more than replacing that preamp you've had for 16 months just because something else has bought itself a better review.
It won't be long before most of us read the handwriting on the wall and stop pretending that the good times are coming back. They aren't.
High end audio is one of a few industries that hasn't been completely subsumed by corporate tsunami of the 21st century. Stay tuned.
As an aside that lends perspective to the times we live in, I'm watching the Fourmile Canyon fire in Colorado carefully. I lived there from 1986 to 1997 and my boys were born in our cabin there. Many of my former neighbors are still there and they have been evacuated. I've seen a few of them interviewed on television. They are shaken and they are anxious about whether or not their home is still standing. And they're worried about losing their photos and artifacts and heirlooms. Nobody seems too worried about their bicycles, stereo systems, big screens, RVs, etc. They are grateful that, while 170 homes have burned to the ground and 3500 people were forced to evacuate, there are no serious injuries, no fatalities and no one missing.
Maybe the biggest threat to the high end audio industry in 2010 is the re-ordering of our priorities.