It's a Retro-Christmas (Again)

In the past few days both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have had articles about the sorry state of the pop music business. The Times Sunday was talking about the baby boomers who shy away from AARP (American Association of Retired People) even though AARP is helping to sell records. How about this? Tony Bennett, the icon he is, has sold the most albums in his entire career for "Duets" (600,500 in the first seven weeks) and Bennett is doing AARP sponsored concerts. Rod Stewart, Elton, John, James Taylor and others are also selling music tied in to their senior status. This is all good unless you're concerned about the future of the music industry. And, you should be because its not in good shape right now. Hip Hop isn't going to do more than it has already done. You can blame the labels for this. They've been busy consolidating and suing its customers -- the next generation. There are wake up calls being placed all over the industry but few are paying attention. It's good to sell music to all generations. It's wonderful that Starbucks has found a way to sell CDs to the customers it knows best. Steve Jobs, for all his genius, can make the portable devices but the labels are going to have to make the music. From my viewpoint, the labels are killing off their own business by not paying attention to the product and there is no end to the proof.