How large (or small) is the audiophile market?

The only real audiophiles i knew are dead...

They played with the gear pieces never were really concerned and never studied acoustics...

I am the only real audiophile i knew now, i used a dedicated room, and i studied how to makes it  holographic with basic gear because i could not enter the upgrades race. My budget lack was my luck but i did not knew at the times....

I succeeded but it takes me 2 years full time to understand how to do it at no cost...

Most people called audiophiles here  buy gear pieces without end on a race to upgrade the sound...

Gear matter for sure...

But  acoustics matter way more  than the choice between  relatively good basic pieces of gear...

Most dont want to know this simple truth, because they dont have a room  dedicated only to audio, they dont have the time to study acoustics... And a dedicated acoustics room done by a pro cost more than a high end system anyway...

What is an audiophile?

It is a fool with money who buy gear pieces  one after the other or a fool with no money ready to have fun in a dedicated room whose hobby is acoustics (me)...

There is rare people with unlimited budget spending money on room and gear....

They dont buy quartz to ground their gear homemade.... They bought costlier product...

@tomcy6 - true, but are there any print publications  whose subscriber base is not shrinking? They are not much of a thing anymore. I remember when most of the people in my apartment building would get the daily paper delivered. Now I'm the only one. I've seen a number of print publications go down since the Pandemic, like the music magazine 'Q' (sister publication to Mojo, if that's even there anymore). You can bet there are many, many more who read these publications online. 

@larsman  my point exactly. The market for any print magazine is rapidly shrinking, much less very fine focused and genre specific magazines. I’m surprised you’re still 12,000 or some odd subscribers at this stage. Me included of course.

To address the op’s, as a teacher/professor for several decades I have known thousands of young people and so my first students are now hitting their forties. I can count maybe on two or three hands and number who’ve actively expressed interest in traditional audio file sound. In fact I was very happy to help two of my high school seniors get set up with decent vinyl playback rigs. One of them just wanted to get rid of her ancient receiver and get powered speakers so I helped her out by donating one of my unused phono stages, Darlington, which really changed the way she listened to music. The other guy I helped by installing one of my unused mm cartridges, a decent grado, which made him incredibly happy as he reported he was hearing the music like he never heard before. But most people under the age of 35 for the most part- I know I’m making a sweeping generalization here- are concerned more about the economics and Mobility factors then fidelity.

Plus, just look at how many more entertainment options are available to people under 30 as compared to Gen X or boomers. It's not just a radio TV and cable, it's everything else and that everything else is much more Interactive and offers A Narrative of sorts. Some of the music my students report listening to most oddly enough is actually game soundtracks.

As i sit here on my deck with a pair of Sony XM5 bluetooth headphones connected by lossless ldac to a Xperia flagship/whatever phone....it is easy to conclude that high fidelity has well reached the ’economics+mobility’ package.

I could walk some young dude back into the music room downstairs and say, "hey, here’s the years of ocd level work performed and how much you need to spend for expanding the high fidelity experience that just happened inside your ear cavity... to a large room like this"....In response, he’s going to justifiably grab my phone+headphones and run away as fast as he could

(Funny thing though...he seems to always have the cash for a 1500 dollar phone and a 2000 dollar pair of sneakers inspired by some influencer)

On the same note, the sheer enormity of music catalog (spotify, amazon music, youtube music, etc) made accessible to the masses in recent times is like never before in human history. The number of music listeners with large playlists is exponentially higher than ever before. Hence, there’s no real excuse for the outdated snootyminds in audiophilia whining about their shrinking businesses... when they have no clue about market penetration.....

P.S

Here’s a very very 'audiophile' test track i use (composing by Adam skorupa)...that comes from a "game soundtrack". Game soundtracks are no longer the ping pong pac man crap sound...it’s something else entirely...

Adam Skorupa - Dwarven Stone Upon Dwarven Stone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz7NG7uVkHk

But most people under the age of 35 for the most part- I know I’m making a sweeping generalization here- are concerned more about the economics and Mobility factors then fidelity.

Plus, just look at how many more entertainment options are available to people under 30 as compared to Gen X or boomers. It’s not just a radio TV and cable, it’s everything else and that everything else is much more Interactive and offers A Narrative of sorts. Some of the music my students report listening to most oddly enough is actually game soundtracks.

The analysis is complicated by the Home Theater market.  Many non audiophiles purchase expensive systems for their home because they can financially.  They want loud movies, not listening sessions.   Without doing any research I look only to my own family.  My non audiophile brother spent a tone on money on a dedicated home theater.  At least 20 grand was spent and that is non trivial.   He was not ripped off, he had nice gear.   

Sales wise that would be viewed as an audiophile purchase, when in fact it was not.   I have quite a nice system that would probably cost 30K to replace today, yet I quit the gear chasing merry go round a good while ago.  

Parsing out the data of true audiophiles, which I would categorize as individuals who have listening sessions and understand the market as well as their own preferences in gear, is quite difficult to accomplish.  We are all guessing and using our own metrics trying to answer this question.   

There are many levels of financial capability to acquire increasing levels of gear as the top end has become insanely expensive.   A young person starting out in adulthood in their early 20s typically does not have the means to acquire top end gear, yet the few that are audiophiles have the desire to build their system as best they can.  Tracking that demographic is almost impossible.

I would suggest that population of what I deem as audiophiles is rather small as much of the really expensive gear is most likely purchased by individuals who buy six figure cars and are neither car enthusiasts or audiophiles.  I would like to be wrong as I love this hobby and great sound, but I believe we are just a very small niche that does not drive the market.