BobbyTimmons
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- Dec 26, 2019
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To me, it also seems like there are less people listening to music very seriously (or "single mindedly" - to write it less objectionally) nowadays, compared to even 20 years ago. While more people might just want some kind of background noise while they browse the internet or sit on the train (hence the popularity of headphones among the youngsters - even as a millennial I think most people I know only listen on headphones).I think that's what's really changed over the past 25 years is that today's home audio has moved from the living room to the desktop, and often involves listening via headphones rather than speakers. Hence you have a variety of compact DACs and amps to choose from at modest prices, while a very decent set of headphones can be had for about 150 USD. But if you want more of an old-school setup involving full-sized preamp, power amp, digital player and so on, those sorts of things have become specialty products, and prices often reflect it.
As for obsolescence, one way you can very quickly determine whether you are buying a product subject to rapid obsolescence is to determine to what extent a product can (or can't!) be used without apps or somehow tying the product to the manufacturer's servers.
I'm not exactly a doomer in most areas, but with the decline in music appreciation there do seem to be some objective indicators of bad health: we can look at the situation with the dying classical music industry, or the "loudness war" in popular music. Similarly, there is less attention to giving children a musical education than in the past. For example, in the 1980s, there were 30,000 pianos sold per year in the UK. Today, only 4,000 pianos are sold per year. Although digital pianos have made up part of the shortfall, there's no doubt that less families are playing the piano, and that being a music private teacher is reported as being almost an untenable profession in some areas of the country now.
It's not the end of the world, and the decline in "serious listening" was probably always inevitable - with so much more competition for our time, from the internet, to video games.
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