The Silver Haired Dudes At The Record Store

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times that looks at the shifting demographic of customers who visit record stores. Norman Isaacs, owner of the Sound & Vision music store in Manhattan, recalls a golden age when teenagers used record stores as a place to escape their parents and explore the world. Now those kids are online and it’s an older considerate crowd that browses his shelves.

The dominance of older buyers is especially evident at smaller independent stores in metropolitan areas, where younger consumers tend to be more tech-oriented and older music fans tend to be more esoteric in their tastes, said Russ Crupnick, an analyst with the NPD Group, a market research firm.

At Norman’s, which is 15 years old and just around the corner from New York’s epicenter of punk, St. Marks Place, shoppers with nose rings and dewy cheeks are not unknown. But they may only be looking to use the automatic teller machine… Most of Norman’s other customers were old enough to remember eight-track tapes. Steven Russo, 53, for instance, was looking for jazz CD’s. Mr. Russo, a high school teacher in Valley Stream, N.Y., said that he values the store for its sense of camaraderie among cognoscenti as much as its selection. “It’s the ability of people to talk to people about the music, to talk to personnel who are knowledgeable,” he said.

NY Times