I doubt the vast majority of young or old audiophiles are purchasing and or researching their audio purchases through audio dealers. Nearly all the audiophiles I deal with at any level are diy their systems. Look at plethora of mid level audio available today, phone systems are where its at for young budding audiophiles. Perhaps they move up to loudspeaker system, perhaps not, time will tell. Audio dealers are obsolete for many of us these days.
And then you have lossless streaming doing relatively good business these days, based on responses on this site it seems many older audiophiles reject streaming audio as high end. Younger budding audiophiles are hearing music with increasing higher fidelity and may buy in to better equipment in future. And to say new recordings are crap is total nonsense, yes, some are victims of loudness wars, but get away from the most popular, commercial recordings, tons of nicely recorded contemporary recordings. I have well over 2500 original vinyl and 3500 cd rips on my NAS, and tons of streams available to me, recording quality is all over the place with all sources.
I reiterate this is the golden age of audio with even greater possibilities ahead. Younger generations have greater access to much better audio equipment and far more music than we did. As to whether they become card carrying audiophiles is not yet determined. How many of us older generation regularly sat down and listened intently to music, evaluating and critiquing sound quality. And then over time we hear some deficiencies, upgrade time, put on repeat ad nauseam. This is the definition of an audiophile, a small demographic then, likely small demographic in the future.
