Need to set one up at the royal William
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Curious you should say that I just had a meeting today with Ocean Studios down there and hope to go and have a look at some potential spaces âŚ
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So if @Mrs_Maureen_OPinion had done dances on TikTok then more people would have bought singing fridges?
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Hillarious and cool do intersect so maybe ???
Tik Tokâs demographic might be a little young however 38% 18 to 24.
High end is dead.
My background for work meetings is my vinyl collection and it often gets a lot of comments and is considered âcoolâ (The fact that it is vinyl is cool, no such comment applies to the content 
)
But very few of the younger (under 30) people buy any music at all.
All music is free.
If they think about buying an up grade it might be better headphones for their phone but that is it.
Gigs are cool and festivals are really cool and they will pay for those. But hifi isnât on their radar, in fact if they use the term hi-fi at all they mean a bluetooth speaker connected to their phone.
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It doesnât help that having your own place to safely keep and use a HiFi is a pretty serious challenge for most 30 year olds.
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Hifi as we old fucks might perceive it is preposterously overpriced to me let alone a younger generation who both DNGAF nor will be made to.
My 21 yr old nephew totally gets it and has a nice vinyl set up. But absolutely none of his many mates has anything remotely like a hifi, and nor do they want one.
Fight it if you want but hifi has very little future as a hobby and will be increasingly niche. In 25 years time probably no one will want your limited edition numbered coloured vinyl of a band no one remembers or cares about.
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The Hifi industry has disappeared up its own arse. I canât get my head around the prices of even modest new gear - I look at it and wonder who the hell can afford this stuff? Most low and mid end equipment these days is pretty damn good and is hard to differentiate on sound quality.
Curisitoes like valves and vinyl and jazz cafes will survive because theyâre cool, while the high end will continue to become even more unattainable, catering to millionaires and billionaires, mainly on how bling it it is. Itâs all becoming increasingly niche.
Iâll just carry on DIY-ing! Mainly because I canât afford anything highly exotic.
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off the radar of cool, important or relevant. Other âdistractionsâ have taken itâs place. Whilst there are people getting into vinyl slowly, if they stick with it, some may gravitate to better set ups. Perhaps the important thing is to give people the experience of âsoundâ in interesting settings to conjure desire ?
Been there, done that 
What is true of hifi is also true of many other traditional consumerist baubles like wristwatches - greed, motivated by a spike in demand during lockdown, has priced FAR too many people out of a toehold in any of it as a hobby.
Indeed, the very notion of having a hobby seems to be in its death-spasms.
laptops, and then smartphones, have turned us all into voyeurs, not participantsâŚ
I kind of think this is where the hipster (Not the right word really) heads in a different direction. Seeking artisanship and quality from things like Coffee, food, clothing etc etc. Sure some of this is Faddy - but look at the change in perception of some of the things they have been tangling with. Go back 15 years and Costa was seen by the average person as posh coffee. These days most wouldnât call it that - Why? Because they have been exposed to better, expectations have risen. This is what may happen with Audio. Probably the best place to see this is New York right now - There are dozens of bars / hotels etc with systems in them. The downside is much is style over substance I fear but the drum is getting banged.
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Letâs hope so 
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Recorded music is perceived as free. It arrives in the ear buds and is consumed in isolation from others. Live music, vide the Oasis fiasco is perceived as unaffordable. Records, whether vinyl CD or tape, at least have some sort of provenance, and can be enjoyed in the company of others. Hence the interest in OJAS style sound system installations.
These will become more important when the inevitable wave of AI generated music arrives. We shall all need somewhere to go out of the rain.
Itâs curious the whole stadium concert thing being seen as ârewarding / special / coolââŚ
You pay ÂŁ100+ to see ant sized entertainer(s) and watch a screen while your back starts to stiffen from standing for 2 hrs. So whatâs the buzz? A) People can say they were there and prove it on their social media â status / belonging B) They gain a shared experience / Tribal communion / Atmosphere â Dopamine C) Release from their bubble a momentary human experience (Actually most stand there with their cameras out) D) Get to be fully present arrested by the spectacle / seized by their senses.
The fact is unless you are lucky position in a stadium, the sound isnât the best, neither is the drink or the queuing the toilets the car parking and a great deal else but this is forgiven and overlooked in favor of the collective pleasure / excitement / release / thrill / reward to the experience⌠Smaller venues may lack the scale of the spectacle but they convey something more human perhaps more intimate. (Different form of pleasure)
HiFi can do some of this on an intimate scale when the experience is in the right set and setting yet it has been rarely shared this way or spoken about this way. I may be too old to champion it but I am starting to see younger people do so, if they are well connected / respected and the experience well curated I do see that sound pleasure can be shared - From there comes interest.
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We are moving into the realm of cultural theory (difficultology) about the different types of collective experiences available to us. For example I am no longer within walking distance of a theatre offering opera, so go to a cinema that offers a live broadcast. The experiences are not identical.
I have also attended folk music festivals in the west of Ireland with no featured performers; the attendees are themselves the performers. There is no formal organisation at all.
A listening cafe could be a way for us to have some kind of collective experience. We have been there before; think frothy coffee and a juke box.
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Very good point; well made. I wonder if the decline in Hi Fi is hand in hand with the decline in living standards in general.
Youâve mentioned property ownership. Increasing numbers of people have to rent. Itâs not just young people.
Then thereâs the lack of job security. The status obsessed UK only values certain occupations.
These are the only ones with a voice, so we donât get to hear about people working masses of overtime to make ends meet.
We donât hear about weak and barely enforced employment law which leads of course to employers getting away with shit that should be actionable.
We hear little about zero hours contracts and the impact this has on family life and mental health.
It is all connected because most people are actually in survival mode; day to day is what itâs about.
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FWIW there were a couple of âhelp yourself to a measured glass of wineâ bars in London, albeit without the jazz. One in South Ken and one in Islington. I know the one in South Ken folded and now I canât find the one in Islington either.
If they donât work with the footfall and money in those places I personally would doubt that they would work anywhere.
Space is a premium for a lot of young people. Both my daughters own their own houses, but they are small houses. They simply donât have enough room for kit plus physical media. All their music is accessed by a smart speaker.
Lots of people, as you say, rent with little stability of tenure. The thought of having kit plus physical media and having to move it every 6 months or a year just isnât feasible for them.
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Is that whatâs on the cinnamon buns?
So given that hardware pricing is leaving reality, and demand dwindling (dying out one generation at a time), then the other consideration is software - and to be frank about modern vinyl, its largely dogshit in terms of intrinsic mastered sound quality and also below par pressing quality and quality assurance. Its a premium price for very underwhelming sound - largely flat in terms of dynamics and 2D soundstage.
Unless you like old farts music, and are willing to pay even more for âaudiophileâ 50th, 60th etc anniversary editions then most contemporary releases on vinyl just donât really merit investing a lot in the reproduction side of things. Thereâs a handful of mastering engineers coining it in for doing AAA reissues but they ainât cutting lacquers for Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Harry Styles etc.
The two people I have tried to pass on the enthusiasm for high fidelity sound to - FoL and nephew have admitted they could probably never justify or find the money for hardware, and records are either too expensive or âhoarded by boomersâ who are being circled by the dealers like vultures ready to pick over the carcass of their collections. Consequently they say that theyâre resigned to waiting till I keel over to divide up my stuff.
Iâm fairly convinced that the hobby as we might see it is already dead, it just ainât been buried yet
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