If you read or write about hi‑fi for any meaningful length of time, you start to notice that certain editorial motifs pop up with predictable regularity. There is, of course, the story about one’s formative years as a hi‑fi enthusiast, which can fuel editorials for years. There’s the story about converting a normie to the cult of hi‑fi, or just having conversations with regular people about our hobby. You can run that one every couple of years and have something new to say.
By far, the Greatest Hit that fascinates me most in recent years, though, is the navel-gazing piece about how audiophilia is dominated by a bunch of old white dudes who keep showing up closer to the bottom of actuarial tables and who have to spin the Year bar on age-verification carousels like the wheel on The Price Is Right before even coming close to their own vintage.
Who’s going to replace these elder statesmen and keep the hi‑fi industry alive? How will Samsung CEO Jun Young‑hyun continue to make payments on his superyacht if the young’uns aren’t buying the receivers and integrated amplifiers and speakers made by companies that Samsung will certainly own by this time next year if they don’t already? Because they’re just not joining our cult in sustainable numbers.
The latest example of this—at least as I write these words—came to my attention as my podcast co-host Brent Butterworth and I were scouring the interwebs for inspiration for the next episode of Audio Unleashed. It comes from a post on the Audiogon Forums, which then got picked up by Headphonesty.com (pronounced “headphone sty”), which turned it into exactly the sort of incoherent, ideologically muddled, uninformative large-language-model slop (or the lazy human equivalent thereof) for which that publication is known.
Headphonesty.com’s headline, “40% of Audiophiles May Be Gone Soon, and No One Is Replacing Them,” is at least an accurate summary of the hand-wringing I’ve been reading for 20 years about the demographic unsustainability of the hi‑fi customer base. And, adding further evidence to my working hypothesis that Headphonesty.com is just feeding links to an LLM and perhaps copyediting the resulting slop, the piece is a sort of shotgun-spray dumping ground of explanations for why younger people aren’t into hi‑fi—at least not in the proper ways sanctioned by the old guard—with no attempt at synthesizing those reasons or even making them consistent.
“The answer, as much as it pains me to say it, seems pretty clear—they’re just not interested,” says the piece. “Younger people stream music through cheap headphones or portable speakers. They’re not messing with turntables or fancy stereo systems.”
That last point proves that whoever wrote this article—human or otherwise—doesn’t spend a lot of time at record stores, which is where I meet most of the young people I encounter these days. They’re messing with turntables, you can rest assured.
The article then goes on to claim that today’s music sucks and wouldn’t sound good on a proper hi‑fi rig (I can think of so many counterexamples that I won’t even bother with this one) and for that matter, kids don’t even really listen to music anyway (wrong!), before blaming modern architecture and then the affordability crisis as the biggest bugbears keeping the youths from embracing audiophilia, which may accidentally be the one good point made by Headphonesty.com here.
From there, the article points fingers at old audiophiles themselves, which would have been a fun read if it had any human spark behind it. But let’s move on from the alleged AI slop summary and go to the genesis of the latest meaningful contribution to this ongoing conversation: the Audiogon Forum post by a user named “rooze” titled “YouTube Indicates What the Future Is For Audiophiles - Interesting Demographics.”
The meat of the argument is that by looking at the YouTube demographic information provided for two different videos by the channel Audio Resurgence—one a review of a Krell amp, the other a parody song about how a nagging wife won’t let an abused middle-aged husband buy any more high-end audio gear—we can tell something about who participates in this hobby.
Before we get into that, let me just say that it often surprises me that people aren’t aware of the fact that YouTube has this sort of information about its viewers. After all, until the technofeudalists, fascists, and nanny-state liberals get their way, you don’t have to give YouTube any identifying information about yourself to watch videos on the service.
Remember, though, Google can build a pretty accurate picture of you based purely on your online behavior, and data brokers can synthesize a startlingly accurate simulacrum of you. Target’s analysis of purchasing patterns within its own ecosystem alone may be accurate enough to know whether you’re pregnant even before you know it. Imagine your behavior across the entire internet being so scrutinized, with Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Facebook all selling little pieces of you to one another in an attempt to understand you well enough to manipulate you better, and it’s not hard to understand how YouTube is aware of the fact that I’m a 50-something honky without having to make me check a single demographic box.
OK, with that out of the way, what do the data provided by “rooze” tell us? For the Krell amp, the viewership was 100% male, with 13.5% of viewers being 45 to 54, 44.4% of viewers being 55 to 64, and 41.3% of viewers being 65+. And, of course, no meaningful viewership any younger than that.
For the song about browbeating broads and their hatred of audiophilia and everything else that might give a man some small sliver of happiness (insert eye-rolling here), 97.6% of the audience was male, with a shocking 5.9% being aged 35 to 44, 18.6% being 45 to 54, 35.5% being 55 to 64, and 40.1% being 65 or older. One can only assume that the 2.4% of female viewers were either hate-watching or experiencing Stockholm syndrome.
At any rate, as I hope you can tell from my snark, I don’t think this YouTube channel’s demographics actually tell us anything about young people’s (or women’s) interest in high‑fidelity audio reproduction. If anything, they tell me that the cult of audiophilia is actively hostile to women and isn’t doing much to meet young people where they are.
There is, of course, a long tradition of hi‑fi publications looking at their own demographic data to get a sense of what’s going on in the market at large. In a piece originally published in Stereophile in June of 1992 titled “Who Are You?,” John Atkinson gave a laundry list of similar demographic information about his magazine’s diehards, including the fact that women made up just one percent of the overall readership. There’s something fascinating that stands out in Atkinson’s data that I want to shine a light on here, though. He says:
When it comes to the age range of the magazine’s readers, again nothing major has changed since 1988, baby boomers making up the bulk of the readership, just as they do the magazine’s staff. Since the earlier survey, however, we have acquired slightly more readers at the older end of the age scale, the above-50 group swelling from 15% to 21%, and the mean age increasing from 39 to just over 41.
First things first, the fact that the over-50 crowd made up only 21% of the mag’s readership in 1992 is fascinating. But read the above carefully, and you notice something. It’s been 33 years since those words were written. But let’s stop focusing on ages and think instead about generations. Boomers were Stereophile’s audience back then, and guess who constitutes the largest contingent of Audio Resurgence’s audience: still boomers.
It’s the same people, y’all. It’s largely the same group of enthusiasts who define the audiophile hobby in an almost tautological sense.
What do I mean by that? Well, let’s ask the question: what does it mean to be an audiophile? It’s a topic I wanted to cover in the very first episode of the SoundStage! Audiophile Podcast, but co-host Brent Butterworth talked me out of it, because he didn’t feel like we had anything relevant to add to that old conversation.
It seems like such a simple question to answer, though, doesn’t it? Wikipedia defines an audiophile as “a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction.”
But is it really that simple? I get told all the time I’m not a real audiophile because my musical preferences don’t match the stereotype, because I listen to too much hip-hop or vocal pop or thrash metal or yacht rock or big beat. I get told I’m not a real audiophile because I use an NAD C 3050 as my reference integrated amp. I get told I’m not a real audiophile because I’m capable of explaining why the notion of network switches affecting sound quality is ludicrous.
Honestly, I’ve got a much better argument than that, if you’re looking for it. I don’t consider myself an audiophile, because audiophilia doesn’t seem to have much to do with enjoying good sound, in my opinion. It’s more about boomers doing boomer shit, to misquote Jules Winnfield. So, yeah, ask me to define what an audiophile is, and I’d say it’s someone who conforms to a boomer’s idea of the proper way of enjoying music, only enjoying the music that boomers sanction, and never questioning the received wisdom of whatever boomer the community at large has decided is its current dean.
And as SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider pointed out in a brilliant editorial titled “A New Year’s Wake-Up Call for the hi‑fi Industry”: “People age out. People die. And without a steady influx of younger, less wealthy—but no less passionate—listeners being inspired to delve into hi‑fi, the industry will continue to shrink into irrelevance.”
That’s pretty much the same argument made by Headphonesty.com, although Doug put it much better, in my opinion. And he also acknowledged the truth that younger listeners are no less passionate about their music than we silverbacks are.
But here’s my take on that: if we’ve allowed an entire hobby to be defined by the preferences and predilections of people born between 1946 and 1964 and no one else, how can that hobby possibly survive their passing? It won’t, of course.
But that doesn’t mean there won’t be audio electronics and people passionate about improving their sound. They just won’t identify as audiophiles, just as I don’t identify as a gamer despite the fact that I’ve been known to spend 18 hours on a Saturday playing videogames such as Civ VI or No Man’s Sky.
It doesn’t mean there won’t be good speakers, good integrated amps, and good amps and preamps for those who want separates, as well as people who can extol the virtues thereof. And it sure as shit doesn’t mean there won’t be new turntables. Of course there will be. When I talk to kids at the local record store, they can tell me exactly which model of turntable they own, as well as the one they pine for if only money weren’t so tight.
But even if they do covet specific brands and models of audio gear, in a post-boomer audio world, products won’t be bogged down by the orthodoxy of a generation who came of age so long ago that they have to constantly remind you that there were no smartphones and computers and videogame consoles in their youth.
Nor will such gear be mired by the association with arrogant old blowhards who base their sense of self-worth on claims that only they know how to really set up these esoteric stereo systems, despite the fact that most of the advice they give is out of touch with the modern world.
That brings up another interesting point. For Christmas this year, my wife bought me the latest release in a videogame series I’ve been absolutely obsessed with for more than two decades. The series is called Lumines (pronounced LOO-min-ess), and the latest installment, Lumines Arise, begins with a bit of guidance that, for whatever reason, struck me as peculiar. After holding your hand through video calibration to ensure optimal brightness settings (and when was the last time you saw anything of the sort on a UHD Blu‑ray disc?), the game then pauses to let you know that “Headphones or surround sound are strongly recommended for maximum enjoyment.”
And boy howdy is that an understatement. High‑fidelity audio reproduction is so essential to the experience of this game that it’s impossible for me to imagine playing it through TV speakers or even a middling soundbar. Whatever Q990 soundbar currently sits atop Samsung’s lineup or whatever soundbar KEF is cooking up would be the bare minimum to truly appreciate the game, in my opinion.
That might seem odd if you merely watch videos of the game on YouTube. Yes, Lumines Arise features a diverse musical palette, ranging from sort of avant-garde ASMR scatting to piano jazz to vocal pop to electronic and beyond. But while it sort of looks like all of that music is merely the soundtrack to a Tetris-style block-elimination puzzle game, it’s not. It’s part of the gameplay experience. It is 100 percent as essential to the game as are the colored blocks and trippy backgrounds and customizable avatars.
You might not even understand why if you sat next to me while I was playing. You really have to pick up the controller and play for yourself to grasp that the music creates a sort of physiological feedback loop with the player. Your movements translate into audio objects that then build to create the songs that you hear, which in turn gets you into an ever-evolving groove that affects the tempo of your movements, which affects the groove of the music, which affects the tempo of your movements, and so on and so on in a sort of interactive musical ouroboros.
It’s not like playing an instrument. It’s not like passively listening to music. It’s not like actively listening to music, either. It’s something you just have to experience for yourself. And I’d argue you haven’t really experienced the game until you’ve sat in the middle of a full-range surround-sound system with calibrated subs, good room acoustics, and everything else required to create a high-fidelity, distraction-free listening experience.
But before now—right this very now—have you seen any reference to this brilliant sonic experience in the hi‑fi press? We have three and a half generations of potential hi‑fi customers who grew up speaking videogames as a native language. Meanwhile, we’ve got a hi‑fi press corps that thinks references to Q*bert are cutting-edge pandering to the snot-nosed 50-year-olds who are ruining the world with their avocado toast and cheap earbuds.
What’s more, if hi‑fi brick-and-mortar stores were still a relevant thing, could you imagine any stereo salesman setting up a gaming station with Lumines Arise sitting at the ready, waiting to demonstrate to potential young shoppers how playing on a properly dialed-in sound system improves the gameplay experience in meaningful and measurable ways? The idea of such is almost laughable. But if I had a store selling high-performance audio gear, you’d better believe a PlayStation 5 would be as crucial to my demo experience as a turntable or streaming amp would be.
Then again, there are market pressures against my covering more games here on SoundStage! Access, because games aren’t viewed as a legitimate medium by the decision makers in our hobby, advertisers wouldn’t want to support such coverage, and people who enjoy games (I’m not talking about gamers here; I’m talking about people who play videogames regularly) probably wouldn’t know to look for my thoughts on Lumines Arise on a non-gaming website.
At any rate, as we were wrapping up our discussion about this article on Audio Unleashed, Brent asked me if I thought the hi‑fi industry would die along with the boomers who make up most of its most ardent supporters right now. And I don’t think it will. No way do I think that.
But I do think it will evolve. It will have to evolve to adapt to the fact that younger generations are more suspicious of marketing claims of any sort. It will have to accommodate an audience that values experiences over things. It will have to adapt to the fact that videogames are a massive part of the entertainment experience for most people under the age of 50, and that the videogame industry itself is going through a massive shift as a result of major studios capitalism-ing themselves to death, meaning that many of the hottest and most talked-about games at the moment are made by tiny independent studios who aren’t afraid to get weird and experiment and make games where collecting Egyptian jazz records and playing around with exotic musical instruments from around the world are the rewards for solving a puzzle.
But as crass as it may seem to say this, I think the hi‑fi industry can’t evolve right now. Not just yet. The aforementioned boomers benefited from the wealth generation of post-war social democracy, only to fall for the lie that it was capitalism that gave them a comfortable life. They reaped the rewards of anti-capitalist legislation and policy, but still bought the propaganda that their resulting wealth was because of capitalism, so they leaned hard into that system of exploitation and screwed the economy for everyone who followed.
Meaning they’re the only ones with any disposable income now.
So put yourself in the shoes of hi‑fi manufacturers and ask what you would do. They have a generation of people with money to blow and decades’ worth of lead poisoning that has affected their judgment. Manufacturers and marketers can easily talk said generation into buying $10,000 audiophile network switches. Or they can do the hard work of actually putting some effort into selling gear that makes a difference to younger generations who are struggling to pay for groceries, much less luxuries.
If you were them, who would you be marketing to right now? Who would you let define the hobby? Who would you pander to? Whose dollars would you be chasing?
Make no mistake about it: I’m not celebrating anyone’s passing. I want my boomer friends to stick around as long as they can. Especially those who don’t seem to be afflicted with severe lead poisoning, and especially those who believe in objective reality.
But I don’t think we’ll truly get a sense of what the future of hi‑fi will be like until most of them are gone and the audio industry is forced to market to a different demographic. A demographic that is a bit more poly-jamorous (and sadly, in my opinion, a lot more individualistic) in their musical tastes. A demographic that is more inclined to respect science and empirical evidence.
Is there reason to believe that a more evidence-based approach to the hi‑fi hobby will appeal to them? Well, flawed as it is, we can look at different sets of demographic data and draw what conclusions we can. Although my podcast with Brent doesn’t do much traffic on YouTube—it’s a tiny fraction of our audience, and I’m convinced that those who listen there only do so because of the easy access to the comments section—it’s the only demographic data we have. And it turns out, on YouTube at least, Audio Unleashed’s audience skews much younger than does the Audio Resurgence channel’s.
I mean, sure, 35% of our audience is over 65. But my interactions with them indicate that they’re a different breed of Boomer. What’s surprising even to me is that another 35% of our listeners fall into the 35‑to‑44 demo, and a shocking 14.3% of our listeners (again, on YouTube, at least) are aged 25 to 34! And you know I’m shocked if I’m using an exclamation mark.
I was curious about whether something similar might be happening over on the SoundStage Network’s YouTube page, given that this family of publications tends to be a lot more skeptical and oodles more science-based than the baseline. So I asked Doug if he would pull the demographic data for the last year. And while I’ll admit that I wish we had more female viewers/listeners, I’m still heartened to see them make up a staggering 10.6% of the SoundStage YouTube audience. What’s more, only 13.2% of views on the SoundStage Network YouTube page come from the 65-plus crowd. Indeed, it’s the second smallest demo, after the 18-to-24 contingent. But if you look at the rest of the age groups, they’re pretty much equally represented, and indeed the 25-to-34 age bracket is tied for first place.
But if I’m going to call out Stereophile and Audio Resurgence for acting like their own demographics are representative of everyone who gives a toot about good sound, I have to do the same for Audio Unleashed and the SoundStage! Network. Maybe we’re the outliers. Maybe our younger-skewing audiences are more noise than signal.
But if they prove anything, it’s that you can attract a younger crowd and get them invested in higher-quality audio reproduction. You just have to meet them where they are.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
