Digital Music Forum: Age matters, but how much?
According to conventional wisdom, teens are the ones actively downloading all the hot new tunes from the Internet on to their iPods. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, hit the shopping mall once or twice a year to lazily fill in missing pieces in their personal CD collections of Golden Oldies.
In reality, though, a lot of under-20-year-olds are scouring the Web for information on the Beatles, while their parents trade songs with their own peers on Facebook or MySpace, according to participants in this week's Digital Music Forum in New York City.
One lucrative target for music marketers -- consisting of people who buy some combination of CDs, concert tickets, and other music merchandise -- actually spans all generations, said Russ Krupnick, VP and senior industry analyst at NPD Group. People who buy CDs "aren't just your grandmother."
Fourteen-year-olds might also buy Miley Cyrus T-shirts, while their elders invest in Eric Clapton tickets, for instance. In fact, those purchasing both CDs and concert tix tend to be over 30, presumably because tickets can easily cost hundreds of dollars apiece these days.
Krupnick suggested that online fare like social networks, podcasts, and Twitter might lure in big music spenders across all generations.
"There are four types of Baby Boomers, and two of them are really into music," said David Card, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
Panelists also cited the large numbers of over 30-year-olds on MySpace and over 50-year-olds on Twitter.
But then again, young people might well buy Clapton or Bruce Springsteen concert tickets if they can come up with the cash, indicated Dinesh Mathew, senior director, Consumer Insight, for MTV Networks, a media outlet focusing on the 12-to-34-year-olds. "Classic [rock] music is big," he explained.
Many under-34-year-olds are particularly interested in classic bands they haven't been directly exposed to when they were younger, Mathew said, giving the Beatles as an example.
Music industry consultant Celia Hirschman, another speaker, noted that when the Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan television show back in 1963, the band drew a worldwide audience of 73 million people.
But after a lot of musical experimentation in subsequent decades, the radio market in most US cities has now consolidated into just a few stations, with limited playlists that don't typically include 40-year-old hit singles.
According to Mathew, without much if any previous exposure, teenagers today feel like they're personally "discovering" bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, in much the same way as earlier generations.
Some panelists suggested that Web sites which wrap historical context around classic rock -- such as blog sites -- can do tremendously well with younger fans. About 14 million users have flocked to EMI's relaunched editorial blogs, for example, said Syd Schwartz, senior VP for digital strategy at EMI North America.
But there are some behaviors and attitudes of under-34-year-olds which are very different, according to Mathews. For one thing, young adults today tend to be more eclectic and wide ranging in their musical tastes.
They're also much more accustomed than older people to interacting with Web site by leaving comments, for instance. Moreover, they demand some sort of acknowledgment for what they've done.
"They don't even care if it's negative feedback. They just want feedback," Mathews illustrated.
Beyond that, younger people hold a distinctive concept of music acquisition. They're so experienced with renting videos and songs that they tend to think to view a rental as a form of temporary ownership.
"A younger person might say, 'I owned that music for a while,' whereas [an older person] might think of this as 'borrowing,'" the MTV exec told the audience.