Thinkcorps

According to Mediaweek, Tracks is dead. My kneejerk reaction was to think that there just aren’t as many old music listeners—but the RIAA data shows that music consumption by age group has actually evened out of late.

I suspect that this might be another demonstration of the ‘Long Tail’—as you get older, you become more of a niche listener and less reliant on mass media recommendations. And this works both ways, as mass media itself has abandoned anyone older than 25 in the rush to capitalize on the young 18-25 demographic (“get ‘em young,” they say). So it’s not like us fogies have any other choice.

Tracks was a trailblazing idea, in many ways, but it was really swimming upstream. I bet it didn’t/couldn’t think of itself as the niche title it really was.