What's going on with the audio market?

My local dealer is in the process of expanding from two "brick and mortar" stores, to three.
Having said that, over the years they have de-emphasized music audio systems, increasing their emphasis in theater systems.
High-end audio systems is such a "niche market", bound to have ripples in the demand.
I'll never forget working at a dealer about 35 years ago, on the news a bump in the stock market, reduction in unemployment, reduction in interest rates and my boss bumped his orders up for products that moved well and we had the worst drought in sales for about three months...couldn't explain it.

Very stagnant economy the past 10 years with a feeble recovery. Middle class income wages diminishing, true unemployment rate is high. Look at the Labor Dept statistics u6=the full picture, u3 of 5% is misleading and incomplete. Our economy needs a major boost and approach. Many people lack discretionary income. National debt has ballooned from 9 trillion to 19 trillion in only 8 years, not good.
Charles,

Real Hi-Fi has always been the providence of a discriminating extreme minority. When I discovered it (via, once again, my friend Pete C.), no one else I knew cared; but then, they were for the most part musician’s, the least caring of all, generally speaking. Ironic. When I got Tympani’s and ARC amps in ’72, my friends were still playing LP’s on their childhood phonographs. When after a long separation I in the early 2000’s saw an old friend, he, upon seeing my Infinity RS-1b’s, said "Ya know, people don’t have big speakers anymore" (no doubt with pictures of Bose wall-mounted speakers in his mind); I replied "They never did". Which was not actually true, in one way; when he and I were in a Band together in ’71, our Band house had a pair of Voice-of-The-Theater speakers (our P.A.) in the living room. And people think Maggies are big?! Now it’s down to computer speakers, at best, for most people. Perhaps getting a turntable will spur an interest in that new buyer of Hi-Fi in general. I believe even entry-level products are viewed as luxury items by the general population. The products musician’s choose (with a few notable exceptions, like Henry Rollins. The big Wilson’s are in his living room!) are all of the professional grade (crap), whatever they see advertised in the music mags and on the shelves at Guitar Center.