"The neighborhood record store was once a clubhouse for teenagers, a place to escape parents, burn allowances and absorb the latest trends in fashion as well as music. But these days it is fast becoming a temple of nostalgia for shoppers old enough to remember Frampton Comes Alive!," says The New York Times.
"We don't see the kids anymore," said Thom Spennato, who owns Sound Track, a cozy store on busy Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "That 12-to-15-year-old market, that's what's missing the last couple of years."
Greta Perr, an owner of Future Legends, a new and used CD store on Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen, said that young people never really came back to her store after the Napster file-sharing upheaval of the late 90s.
The story says:
Industry statistics bear out the graying of the CD-buying public. Purchases by shoppers between ages 15 and 19 represented 12 percent of recorded music in 2005, a decline from about 17 percent in 1996, according to the Recording Industry Association. Purchases by those 20 to 24 represented less than 13 percent in 2005, down from about 15 percent. Over the same period, the share of recorded music bought by adults over 45 rose to 25.5 percent, from 15 percent.
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