Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Wehamilton, interesting post and your analysis of our popular culture is spot-on. But to varying degrees, hasn't the popular culture of any era been mired in the banal? Is ours at the extreme in this regard, and if so, by what margin?

I can agree with the persepective that if tastes in our culture were more refined and discerning, then there would logically be a greater number of people interested in "audio as art." Remember, however, that the demand side is only part of the equation, and many would argue that it has a lesser influence than supply side effects. So in fairness, let's consider the supply side of this situation.

I have argued here, and in other threads, that the rate of significant innovation in high-end audio/music reproduction has been so glacially slow that relative to other consumer goods, high-end audio now offers extremely poor value for the consumer dollar. Relatively speaking, there has been significantly more innovation in the A/V, home-theater oriented segment of the market and this is where consumers have flocked with the dollars that they are willing to expend for this type of product. From a value-added perspective, their behavior is only "rational," whatever that means.

Understand that their choice doesn't reflect my values and I'm not arguing this from a HT enthusiast's point of view, I don't even have one and I too think that they're silly. But why is it so easy to demonize individual consumers, yet not look critically at the behavior of the firms that make up the high-end audio industry?

I suspect that there is more innovation in A/V gear because there is more demand thus more competition for the consumer dollar. Hi-End doesn't innovate because there isn't enough wide band interest. It seems many of the large hi-end firms have taken the marketing approach over real innovation. My take is audiophiles are as prone to marketing hoopla as the rest of the populace, I don't see much difference other than our interest is music and the A/V crowd is racous, bonerattling sensory meltdown. Remember that Opera was originally played to the masses 400 years ago. Times change, tastes change and the fringes left behind are always lamenting for the good ole days. Problem today is things are changing soooo fast that it is hard to imagine what the fallout will be. That is the scary part to me. Life in the chaos lane.

There's no question the electronics industry is always looking for the next big thing. And when they find it, all the manufacturers seem to move in lock-step to saturate the segment with product as they push their mature product lines to the back burner. And we all know that high end audio equipment has reached the flat part of the curve where the law of diminishing returns starts to limit the size of the next incremental improvement. Still, having said that, the fact remains that audio today delivers a level of performance we only dreamed about 20 years ago. So if all else were equal, it should be enjoying an upsurge of interest due to the high level of performance and value that it now offers. Afterall, greater numbers of us listened to inferior equipment 20 years ago; yet interest in high end declines when in fact, the opposite should be true.

So getting back to the spirit of the original question, what has changed? Well the short answer is "we have." Getting back to my previous post, new products only take-off when there is a convergence of new technology with a receptive public. That receptivity is most dramatic when a product taps into the prevailing mindset of consumers. We all know of the stories of good technologies that failed to find a market because they were out of synch with the mood of market in one way or another. So while the manufacturers can offer a supply side push with an array of new products, they end up pushing on a rope if it isn't striking a resonating chord with the customer.

In the 60's, Marshall McCluhan wrote "The medium is the message." I would update that in 2001 by saying "the technology is the message." Getting back to my post of yesterday, the receptive chord that has been struck with today's consumer is the technology of home theatre delivering the desired heightened experience. The experience becomes more important than the programing, and as a result, the technology (or equipment) becomes the "message."

A previous poster raised the valid point that pop culture has always been banal, and the mass market will always be bigger, which is true. I was reminded of this watching Ken Burn's Jazz that Ella Fitzgerald's first big hit was "A Tisket A Tasket"- not much better than the Spice Girls when you get right down to it. But I think one thing that is different now in various aspects of society is the switch in influence from a "top down" to "bottom up" paradigm.

This really started in the 60's. Prior to that trends in fashion or most anything else filtered down from the top- rich people, jet setters etc. But since the 60's the dominante influences in society have been "bottom up." Now you could say, "Well wasn't jazz the classic bottom up influence?" And I would say absolutely it was, but they were all wearing suits and ties while they were playing it- just like the upperclass people they were playing for. When the Beatles quit wearing their short jacketed suits in 1964 that was about the last vestige of any pop culture personalities still influenced by the top down paradigm. And not insignificantly, they then proceeded to blow it into oblivion.

So what's the point of all this? In the bottom-up paradigm we now live in, the influence of the banal pop culture is greater than ever before. When combined with greater disposable income than every before it is little wonder that the taste of the common man now dominates the Board Room when product decisions are being made. So it's not our imagination that there has been a lowering of the bar in a lot of areas, music and audio being on top of the list of casualties. The "mass market" no longer aspires to the same things as the high end market in many areas, and audio is the classic example.

Uh-oh, I see a chicken versus the egg argument starting. Nonetheless, I don't think that demand for HT caused the innovation in that segment of the market, but the other way around. People saw and heard the new boom and sizzle setups and said "eh-eh, eh-eh, eh-eh, that rocks!" (Sorry for the gratuitous Beavis and Butthead reference).

I remember reading an interview with Bob Stemple, then CEO of General Motors, in the late 1980's. He said problem was stupid Japanese consumers wouldn't buy GM vehicles because the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and poor GM couldn't put them in the right place because of the low volume. Apparently the braintrust at GM didn't/still doesn't understand the difference between cause and effect. The problem is that GM made cars that didn't meet Japanese consumers' needs (steering wheel in correct place), thus they would never/never will achieve any volume in Japan. What a vicious cycle.

But isn't this what we face in the high-end? Can't innovate because there isn't enough demand/market is too narrow. Or is demand low (and falling) precisely because the manufacturers don't innovate? And if they did, wouldn't people say "eh-eh, eh-eh, eh-eh, that sounds cool ... gotta have one"?