How large (or small) is the audiophile market?

Can we please get back to discussing audio? M

I would think about the amount of audiophiles worldwide. The reason I say this is that I have sold a lot of high-end used gear over ebay and at least a third of it has been shipped outside the country. My VPI TNT-3 went to Australia, believe it or not. Shakti Tile to Japan! (I never heard it do a thing.) And so forth. I own Sonus Faber speakers built in Italy, and I'm sure they are purchased all over the world. Moon streamer from Canada. I purchased a used ARC phono preamp from Canada. My headphone amp is from China. And so forth. I live in the USA.

To my knowledge, the customer base is in Asia for most of the "ultra high end" sales from us/euro brands.

I'd love to know the actual numbers of 75k speakers sold annually in the US, that and how many 100k amps. I think the absurdly high priced components must sell in the few dozens annually. 

I'd love to know the actual numbers of 75k speakers sold annually in the US, that and how many 100k amps. I think the absurdly high priced components must sell in the few dozens annually. 

The UHQR release of Aja is limited to 30,000 copies and are still in stock so is it safe to say less than 30,000?  ; )

@chenry one of 2 BestBuys in my city has closed and the one still open has Magnolia no more. So I am not sure how real it is. 

Audiophile record sales of new pressing seem to be doing pretty well. I would say that anyone that buys an audiophile record when a "regular" pressing is available is an audiophile. I don't want to start an argument with the digital only folks, but that is a good start. 

They have no problem selling 20-30,000 of $100+ records of very popular albums. Maybe one in 50 audiophiles buys them (this is global). Add on the digital audiophiles and you're probably at a couple million people worldwide. Higher percentages of the population are in they group in England, Europe and Asia.

If you widen the group to include anyone who buys $1500 speakers, you've gone too far because you've included HT people, many who have no idea what 2 channel auto sounds like.

Like it or not, the torch-bearer for high-grade audio, in the U.S. anyway, is Magnolia. It is a gateway to 2-channel systems. The web is  the road to other dealers representing higher-end or rarer equipment. Audio shows might offer exposure if you live convenient to regular show venues.

Finding products from even mainstream brands like Yamaha is not as easy as in the past, at least not to see and hear in a shop.

The market probably isn't growing uniformly. HT is probably doing better than high-end 2-channel. Many don't see that as "audiophile" but the truth is that many people entering the market of audiophile products have started in HT.  More esoteric markets, tube gear and such is gaining small increases in interest mainly from lower-cost products being available from eastern Europe and China. The toeholds are new brands from China that make experimentation affordable. The costs of many high end brands sharply limit the market to later-life affluent (mostly) men. As far as competing for discretionary dollars, audio just doesn't do all that well against rising costs of other necessary and desirable goods.

I suppose to clarify, I would consider an audiophile to be anyone how cares about music reproduction enough to have some sort of playback system besides a smart phone and earbuds or an Alexa device.

When I was in college it seemed that pretty much 50% of men's dorm rooms had some kind f decent stereo.  I could count the women's dorm rooms with decent tunes on one hand.  So that would put the population at about 12.5% of students with decent music back in the 70's.

Now I don't really know anyone besides myself (and my system is pretty modest) who owns anything other than "lifestyle" products.  So that was the direction I was trying to go with this thread.  There is so much expensive equipment out there...who buys that stuff?

The only guy I know that I would consider an audiophile owns a powerful old Marantz that he recapped himself, and he doesn’t chase more.  He is older, like myself.  With the high costs of living, and especially housing, I think younger Americans don’t have the money or interest to purchase high cost audio equipment (I know OP wasn’t asking about cost, but let’s face it — this is not a cheap hobby).  It’s appears that convenience, affordability and “good enough” are what Millennials and younger folks seek. 

There appears to be much more supply of high end product than any possible market for it. To prove this, I pulled a Stereophile issue from roughly 10 years ago and then researched some of the manufactures to see if they were still in business. Many were not going concerns. I don’t understand how so much new capital is being allocated to such a small market with seemingly endless new offerings. What market research is showing enough scale to the audiophile market to justify this?

To this point, there’s companies like Acora Acoustics Corporation, which bought Audio Research as part of a private equity deal.

Acora makes stone speakers. How many people are buying their speakers a year? 5? 100? How do these companies exist?

I don't think the market for quality audio equipment will disappear, but I think it will contract. I'm in my late 60s and as a kid the family listened to our stereo (such as it was) for family entertainment. That entailed actually buying physical media and loading it up on the turntable. Recorded music has been commoditized for young people with ITunes and a cell phone-no more "ritual" involved. There are exponentially more entertainment choices and music is more likely to be a background thing while they are working out, etc.Quality sound is not very important in that context. One of my great pleasures is spending a couple of hours, or more, just listening to music and nothing else-my kids (in their 30s) don't get that at all.

I also think the disappearance of brick and mortar stores contributes to the shrinking market. How many young people have actually heard a reasonably competent system? In the old days, audio stores were plentiful and even if you couldn't afford to buy you were exposed to the experience if you were curious enough to walk in to a store. That's not happening much these days.

My opinion is that I think the market is going to slow in a bad economy. It will pick up in a good one. The generation of the 60s, 70s, 80's are dying off. I have a lower cost tube system, Speakers I designed, built, I stream, no investing in clicks and pops. I have a selection of 60 million titles.  Having a high end stereo is dependent on whether you have the desire to invest money in high end audio or something else. Today, we have water sports, 4 wheelers, off roaders, fishing boats that cost 48k for a nice Lund boat, a nice car like a Mustang GT, Challenger SRT, or high perf Audi, Porsche, To Corvette Jag......  My opinion, you need the ears for high end audio, you need a decent room, and a budget you can afford. High performance is not always how much money is dumped. Depends on ears.  You must love music. Rap is not music, sorry. My grand daughter who is in Korean artists loves my system which is lower scale but decent. 

I used to work for a high end art gallery in New York. I was told there the market for people who would purchase $100,000+ artworks was 2,000 people.

So depending upon what level of price point for audio gear, I’d guess somewhere in same order of magnitude.

i know a good amount of upper middle class with basic McIntosh systems probably at $25k total.

But that’s just based off the day point I know.

COME ON.  How can you ask, much less answer, this question without setting even broad boundary conditions?

How do you define an "audiophile"?  Someone who "buys $1500 speakers"?  Someone who "subscribes to TAS or Stereophile"? Someone who seeks out the best-sounding hirez content and then listens to it on an iPhone and AirPods?

Is a twentysomething defined as being an audiophile by different criteria than one would use for a person over sixty?

The legal profession understands the simpler the question, the longer the answer.  If the OP is looking for anything like a concise, definitive response, he or she needs to add a few boundary conditions...

I notice that many of the most credible responses here add their own qualifications to the question.

Just sayin’.  Before you can even answer the question one posed by the OP, we need (more conversations?) to resolve the implicit assumptions that underlie it. 

Boomers got into audio because we didnʻt have home computers back then.  The hi-end hi-fi market has always been slow and small.  As we boomers pass on, the market will continue to shrink, but there will always be those who love it.

One big problem is that the audio manufacturers are not only competing with each other, theyʻre also competing with the used audio market.  If youʻre thinking of getting into the business, donʻt.

Being "audiophile" ask for a minimal level of  artistic,literary and spiritual education which level had decreased in the West compared to traditional Eastern societies...

Technological training for industrial needs is not education which is about values....

 Then sophisticated musical forms are put more aside...

Sound quality had improved nowadays to a minimally satisfying acoustical threshold, his cost decreasing, then people consume the music from the programing media without being bothered about sound quality, when they are already  passed over this improved  minimal threshold ....

 Then a fool as myself who bother to ground his gear pieces at low cost to hear a jazz quartet or a chorus piece of music appear nuts, especially when observed from a phone camera in his dedicated acoustic room among tubes resonators of different kind...

If a person spoke about acoustics resonators we then  must put him in an asylum  ...Anybody speaking of the unexisting "soul" and of music meaning hierarchy will be isolated and  we will be protected by this mental disease by some injection for sure in the near future thanks to our oligarchs for this medical progress..

In a word the dimension of  the audiophile market depend of the definition of "audiophile" and  if i bought only peanuts cost gear, as i  did by budget limitation, am i an audiophile ?

Back in the early 80s, I worked for a small company where the owner was the Imperial Potentate of Shriners International. I clearly remember having a conversation about the decline in their membership.  His view was that over the decades, men had more options for spending their time compared to the past.  It seems like there is an element of this happening in the audiophile world.

I think the International market is huge. Especially in Asia. Classical music is a big deal in China. There are more pianos in China now then there ever were in the West. I have noticed that most Audiophile brands are bought and sold on Ebay from all over the world.

@michaelspiellman I am not leaving a dime for my kids. When I die they will or will be well on their way to being very well established in life.

I am spending their inheritance on them know when they need it. Helping them buy their first homes, paid for their college, bought their first mid level audio system and when they need help or things come up I offer to help. 

Whatever is left will be given to my Church, Samaritans Purse and the local Humane Society. 

While the current audiophile market feels small, my thought/theory is that it may grow significantly at some point in the not-so-distant future.   

One of the hurdles I hear frequently cited as a reason that the younger demographic does not participate is they can't afford to buy a home to put the equipment in and can't really afford the equipment. That dynamic is about to change, in a rather big way.  

Over the next 20 years, we are heading toward the greatest wealth transfer in history.  Estimates are that boomers/silent generation will leave over $84 trillion dollars to their heirs by 2045.

That amount of newly found wealth will eliminate many/most of the financial hurdles that currently limit the participation in this hobby.  And the younger generations don't seem to have the hesitancy about spending money in general that preceding generations seem to have hung onto for many decades.  

So, there it is.  The future could be bright for this hobby. Afterall, that $84 trillion dollars will largely be spent, and much of it on homes/hobbies/experiences.  Having a kick ass home theater could well become much more common.   

I have a breakfast meeting with a high-end cable manufacturer this week.  This was on my "wishlist" of topics.  We’ll see what he has to say about the "audiophile market".

Lots of good posts here on the OPs topic.  We all have our own ideas on the state of the "audiophile market", how we got here, and how to improve it.

A couple of thoughts:

-- The cost of delivering good sound into a space is directly proportional to the size of the space -- cubic feet, or even cubic centimeters -- and, yes, cubic millimeters when we’re talking about the ear canal.  Consumers looking for a quality listening experience need not spend $$$ if the listening "room" is confined to the space between their ears.

-- Consumers want to leverage their investments to maximize ROI.  So, IF it can play music AND play movie soundtracks AND provide a definite upgrade from the horrible sound of built in computer speakers then the math works.  A dedicated 2-channel music system is not a remote possibility for many for a number of (valid) reasons.

-- People will spend money on what their attention is on.  Those who are in a relationship, or have kids, understand this completely. Whatever the attention is on at the time, is where the money gets spent.  Grabbing the attention of would-be audiophiles during an F5 tornado of noise and distraction is not easy.  And, seasoned audiophiles may find that "other" things getting their attention will certainly divert their attention (and dollars spent) to other things.  Publications (hard copy) are helpful as well as face-to-face, highly personal interactions with quality people connected personally or professionally with the hobby.  And, yes, forums like this.

-- 

The audiophile market for traditional audio is shrinking at an alarming rate. I have been in audio sales for 30 plus years & I work for a major retailer. I have noticed a steady decline in the receiver/ traditional speaker market for the last 20 years. In the last, 2 years the business has been on life support with 0 interest in traditional audio with a flight to soundbars and Bluetooth. My store has decided to close the speaker and receiver area & to sell off all the floor stock because the inventory is dead weight. The reason that Bose & Samsung own the market now is that the audio companies cannot survive on their own without financial backing from a larger corporate sponsor. The 2ch high end market may be different but I think it will be on life support soon when time catches up to the 60 something’s that support the industry.

@invalid 
you do realize that the only reason most young people have a large playlist is because they don't have to pay for it, they actually expect it to be free

The reason they have large playlists is because they're all using Spotify which for a relatively small monthly fee gives them access to almost any song they care to listen to.

KEF (U.K.)
Rockford (U.S.)
Bowers & Wilkins (U.K.)
Pioneer (Japan)
Dynaudio International (Denmark)
 

These are not high end audio companies IMO, they are good companies except for Pioneer, but I wouldn’t own anything from them except if it’s in a second system. Pioneer is referenced not TAD. That’s like saying Lexus when they were thinking of Toyota, completely different companies. 

The Kef blades sounded ok when I heard them a year ago, but I have speakers that I like better, and my budget was over $100k for speakers.
 

The mid-fi market is alive and well. The sound quality has moved up a good bit. Audiophiles are everywhere, (they just don't know they are audiophiles.) They are using IEM's and they sound really, REALLY good!! Yes, even with Spotify or You-tube.

The more affluent group are using sound bars with subwoofers usually connected to the TV. Both in the den or out on the patio. Honestly, they sound pretty darn good and are perfectly adequate for dinner parties or half time shows during superbowl. 

In car stereo is better than ever, especially when connected to stream off the phone. Big sound improvements have been made.

Everyone I know has one or the other. Music listening is everywhere. Even on the golf range hitting balls!!

The "Golden Age" of music reproduction is now not 25 years ago. Various components... Headphones/Loudspeakers(Standmounts)/All in One units have exceeded expectations of what was thought possible 25 years ago. Nobody has a "Crystal Ball" to predict the exact future of HEA but there will always be a segment that wants/desires a no compromise system regardless of size/cost and space required.

Electronics and home entertainment market is big.   Market for bulky, inefficient, expensive things in general is not good and will only get worse.   Technical advancement has changed things a lot from the golden age of hifi that peaked back in the 20th century  which is already a quarter century old.   Moving ahead and not backwards is the key to survival.  Older people struggle with that.  Younger ones take it stride just like we old codgers used to when we were young and learned to like our fancy toys of the time.   Some things never change.

It's almost like being back in grade school.

I know you are, but what am I?

Guys, with all respect intended, would you please take this quarrel offline.

You have totally derailed this thread.

Axpona had a record attendance of around 10993, up 5%.  I am 61 so don't be offended but judging by the pictures of attendees our time has passed.  I did note that the obligatory AED in each room had silver wiring to match my hair.  So yes, literally dying off like my Ladies newspaper business.

Also, no house to play in without neighbors beating on walls etc, why bother.  Sad.  Just streamed Dear Prudence, no idea of the bass buried in a tune I have heard for 50 years.  

Happy Listening!

@gano 

I looked at that comment I posted and I wasn't comfortable with it, so I deleted it right away. But I guess the forum must have sent an email notification. Sorry about that.

I appreciate it @mahgister 

@devinplombier I am very respectful to others. For instance I don't have anyone's comments removed. But respect is only afforded until someone attacks me or spreads lies knowingly. Any conversation here is moot now as most of my comments are removed because the truth inconveniences "some". This has become a forum for the bullies to ridicule people and silence them. 

It very much reflects the world out there (in the US) where one side spreads lies and limits any free speech they don't like and the other side has to shut up. 

There is certainly an audiophiles crowd increasing in China though...

 I ordered at peanuts cost  (25 bucks) not only a linear power supply but at 40 bucks a conditioner for DC for my amplifier and it work too without negative impact...

 I will not recommend this for a 20,000 bucks system..

But for a system under 1000 bucks as mine  it does marvel...( lower audible noise floor increase) ...

After appropriate grounding and a good conditioner +linear power supply the noise floor level are so good it is black background...

 These offering of a Chinese company specialized in audiophile products reveal there is a demand for low cost audiophiles products which must work if the company want to survive... It reveal an increasing crowd of Chinese customers asking for these  affordable but anyway audiophile quality products...

For the matter of this thread, as i already said, i appreciate any person comitted to a brand if it is disclosed...

The more there is of these "paid"  brand affiliated the best for audiogon...

The only condition is that must be disclosed...

I apologize if i were the cause of any discomfort...

Your sincere words prove to me that i am wrong to have conflate you with some others...

I regret that our encounter turned "sour" ...

 My best sincerely ...

Unfortunately you are by far not the worst kind here. You are a human being with a heart and mostly good intentions, you just have an issue with separating facts from feelings.

I am against the removal of any post save murder appeal...

The reason is simple :

I use my brain and i stand behind my arguments...

Now where did i insinuate to begin with about someone  personality here ?

Nowhere. I answer to someone attacking me grossly... Yes...

After that , accused of being narcissist, and others epiteths, i answered to those who did that...

Some attacked me in this thread and on others thread (deep33 among others) with no  rational argument about the matter of the thread or about my own take on the matter of a thread but against my "person" "per se", even if they were right it is impossible to tolerate ad hominem attack against anybody ..

I am again censorship of any posts because it erase manifested stupidity from those who throw personal attacks...

I hope i am clear...

a note:

I am here since 10 years...

I never ask to remove a post...

 Even the post accusing me of murder (covid)...I can defend myself from accusation i have a working brain...

is it clear for those who like insinuating and attacking people without any proof ?

I dont tolerate personal attack of this kind even again anyone here not just myself.....

Anybody accusing me of derailing this thread since my apology in my last post must ask abnerjack  to be responsible in his postings with insinuations...

Insinuations are worst than insults...

I dislike hypocrite...

 And i am not amused by stupidity... ( stupidity is causing wrongs to someone without even taken a benefit from it)

And i never joined a gang attacking someone either here as a scapegoat...as it occured some times against some "personalities"...

I prefer to be on the side of those alone or isolated...

I dont spoke bad either about those who are no more here...

I hope abnerjack has taken note and will abstain in the next year of insinuations about me...

@mahgister and his morals and scruples personally, how do you know he doesn’t go whining to mommy for a deletion and then responds loudly.  Are you one of his enablers/apologists?  Did you have the post removed?  Do you not see the double standard, or do you have one-sided sight as well? 

I told my dog he is in my will

That is commendable, @abnerjack .

        I told my dog he is in my will because it is likely he will outlive me.

. . . every night before I go to bed I tell my dogs, "I'll see you guys in the morning if all four of us are lucky."

We've all got one foot in the grave whether we know it or not.

@immatthewj 

Unfortunately, they also say to subtract 12 years for those of us who enjoy an alcohol beverage or two.  So 79-12 equals 67.  

I better go see the doctor, I may be dead already.