Why Don't More People Love Audio?

You will find 1 in a million that cares about AUDIO ENOUGH to CARE about the SOUND of what they have and or are buying. Select audiophiles and or some people actually listen to what they are buying. MOST ALL buy because someone else says its good. Should clean out their ears, oh well.

10 year old thread, wow.
Part of the blame goes to the poor marketing within the retail sector.
Most high end audio shops, (before the internet did a Sherman's March to the sea) treat it as if it's brain surgery and talk down to customers. I know, I owned a shop for 15 years, then traveled the US to stores from NY to Tustin, CA, to Washington State, to Coral Gables, Florida.
Rarely did anyone within these stores exhibit the kind (note I said rarely) of professionalism that would pull a casual hobbyiest into the mainstream.
With the prices of high end gear, the sales staff needs to be very, very professional and excellent communicators, not a haughty, afectatious, superior acting twerps--the description of many I met in my travels.
Ask one hundred people to name a loudspeaker and 99+ will of course say, Bose. The only company founded by a man with two degrees--IN MARKETING.

Good listening,
Larry

Most everyone involved came on board when the ground was fertile and the crops couldn't fail. Now that there is a shrinking market and an inexplicably expanding manufacturing base, times are getting very tight.

If audio had been more welcoming and less elitist, perhaps the customer base might have expanded laterally. Now the only hope of survival seems to require reselling, rebadging, renaming, regurgitating the same stuff to the same people over and over ad infinitum. But the rancidity is becoming difficult to ignore. The excitement is gone. The superlatives have all been overused. The ultra dream stuff is no longer a carrot dangling just out of reach. It now requires a powerful lens to be seen because it is so far out of reach. Big disincentive.

My own theory on the astronomical pricing is this: sales are scarce at every level but if you can sell just a couple of items at twenty times their cost (and there are enough zeroes involved) you can stay in biz and continue to dream about the return of those halcyon days of Levinson and Krell. Heck, when you're not busy you may as well dream.

I'm retired.

How about "audio galleries" where companies loan their equipment? People pay $10-20 and can listen to the "B&W" room or the YG Acoustics room.
There would be no pressure to buy, the entrance fees covers operating expenses, and no overhead like a dealer who has to buy the stuff as it would be on loan.

Hmmm. Audio galleries. People bringing in their favorite music just to hear it the best way possible. A 3-D listening experience, or the best they'll ever hear.
Some would get the bug and want to take the experience home.
Something to think about.