There is no one solution to the issues plaguing the audio industry today. Most have been mentioned above, the demographic with money to spend and upwardly mobile are Millennials, most of them have a form of ADHD which stems from their diet, drugs (legal and otherwise) and overstimulation from using computers, pads and and cell phones. Add to that music being made (poorly) and sold today largely isn't fit for consumption on anything that sounds decent. Then you have the relatively overnight disappearance of nearly physical media, coupled with said Millennials belief that everything should be open source (free to them no matter what it is).
Say what you want, and I don't mind decent digital audio, but my streaming experiences have all mostly negative. I wouldn't own a streaming device or subscribe to ITunes, Tidal, Pono or any of rest on a bet. Oh, don't forget the s*it show of continually changing formats in ar relatively short time, Vinyl and Cassette to CD was a decent interval change, however SACD, DVD/A, Blu-Ray plus all the high resolution formats were changing almost yearly over the last 20 years. One day a format was considered the last name in reproduction, next year they were not supporting it with music titles or equipment, something else had taken it's place. The same thing happened to home theater, which in and of itself gobbled up many potential customers, yet another continually changing format with all the different surround sound gear and software titles. Here today gone tomorrow. Now we're seeing huge increases (relatively) in purchase and consumption of vinyl cassette and open reel.
Don't forget by and large, (educators) haven't been teaching any sort of Art or Music,.. playing instruments, voice, or music appreciation of any type in schools (most anyway) the last 3 decades. I wouldn't call the garbage being sold or streamed music, it's mostly poor quality trite noise that likely does sound better on a phone or in ear buds. it sure doesn't sound good a decent stereo. I'm in my 50's, my dad always had really decent stereo gear and great music, having passed on this legacy to me. I was lucky enough to grow up when decent B&M stores were at their peak. We had The Discerning Ear, Gramophone and Sight and Sound, when I was growing up. Gramophone is where I've bought 90% of my gear, Marantz, VPI, McIntosh, Sony ES, etc. There are not many places like these today where you can go to see and hear what decent gear is about. Most places have a Best Buy, they have Magnolia but my experience there was the 20 somethings working there know/knew nothing about what the sell, which is a sin really, McIntosh used to be particular about the dealers representing them, I wouldn't put my companies gear in Magnolia to be sold,, but hey, you have to make money and to do that you need exposure, especially today in the audio business.
Younger people buying today either buy what someone else has they have seen or what is popular/being discussed on Facebook and other social media outlets. That includes, cars, phones, homes, stereos, whatever. They likely didn't have a dad who was in to music and stereo, didn't play an instrument in or out of school growing up and were not exposed to decent sounding music anywhere, no school trips to the symphony. Parents were too busy working trying to survive tha to actually spend real quality time with them.No exposure or experience, things they do have experience and exposure, (cell phones, computers, tablets I-Pods/ITunes) they engage and support. Essentially it boils down to the world is a totally different place today, unfortunately.
I was very surprised at this whole analog/vinyl revival over the last decade. More than likely once the fad passes, and it's no longer the cool thing to buy and play records, the next generation will latch on to something else, the next big thing. So buy all the records you can while you can. In another 20 years they may pass into obscurity again, (along with this audio hobby/passion of ours) if we don't pass knowledge, desire and interest in music and audio down to the younger generations. Where it goes is largely up to us, those of us who are supporting this industry today. Once we're gone who knows what will happen to it...
