Audiophile Companies Are Freaking Out Over Tariffs When They Should Be More Scared of Demographics

If you want to know the health of an industry at any given moment – ask someone who sells said industry advertising. For more than 25 years, this is pretty much how I’ve made my living and I can tell you that advertising is the first thing to go when times get tough and often the last to come back when economies settle down. Is this sound business strategy? Not even close unless you are the verge of going bankrupt. Slashing your marketing in a down economy is backwards logic as an audiophile company needs more motivation for to get people to spend in a recession or down economy but fear is a strong motivator and bean counters get more credence in tough financial times. The less than savvy companies fail to see the market share opportunities that present themselves in a down economy which is boldly, their mistake. A mistake, that I’ve seen too many times past eras of poor economies. 

To put it politely, 2025 has been a rough year for everybody involved in the audiophile business.Threats of tariffs by the current administration and its desperate desire to inject uncertainty into the market has thrown a bucket of cold water on the consumer electronics industry which has been booming since the COVID pandemic. 17 years of no recession is simply unprecedented. So is blowing your economic foot off with a self-inflicted wound that has instilled fear and a lack of confidence into not just the audiophile business but the entire global economy. Don’t trust me on this matter – trust Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve who just refused to lower historically high interest rates for the fourth time in a row. 

Anyone who watches the space knows that the audiophile business is spooked. These companies do more business overseas than in the United States and every time we make threats of tariffs, reciprocal tariffs are put on our products. It is mutually assured economic destruction and worthy of fear but what is far more worrisome and what should be scaring the audiophile industry more than the President’s saber rattling is our radical demographic problems.

How Bad Are the Audiophile Demographic Problems?

The audiophile business bloomed with the Baby Boomers in the 1960s when music was at its all-time best and there were more young people coming into adulthood at one time than ever before. Roll the tape forward to today and the industry has been a nearly all-male, Boomer-dominated hobby since then. The quirky and often bizarre behaviors like listening to music alone in a darkened, messy room isn’t very inclusive. The modern focus on “end game”, cost-no-object audiophile components may seem like a test drive in a Ferrari when you see one on the cover of a print magazine but to focus on said Oligarch Audio solely is to ignore a new generation of audiences. Too many in the audiophile hobby are ignoring younger audiences. They expect to shake the tree and eat the fruit when we need to be trimming, feeding and watering the tree for future growth. 

Regional Audiophile Shows Highlight the Hobby’s Urgent Demographic Problems

I attend nearly all of the best audiophile shows around the world. I just went to T.H.E. Show in my newly adopted (temporary) home of Orange County, California. Before that I had a great time at the Munich HIFI show in Germany which is epic (we will miss you as a host city, Munich). A few weeks before that was AXPONA in Chicago which is, by far, the biggest audiophile show in the United States now and well-worthy for a consumer to travel to The Windy City for a few days to hear a whole lot of very cool audiophile systems.

Most audiophile show promoters fail to find new audiences. University students from music schools, business schools, engineering students – there are so many who might fall in love with what we do but they don’t get courted. When Bill Curtis owned Home Theater Magazine, he did a show in Orange County and it was epic. He partnered with The Orange Country Registrar and drove real traffic to his event. The audiophile show promoters need to focus more on making their current shows more well-attended versus adding more and more events all over the country as these events are costly to attend and end up being a bit watered down in terms of their power and/or reach. 

Last year, I wrote about a young engineer from SpaceX who bought our COVID-era sofa (read the story here). He and his tech industry buddy had never heard a good audiophile system and were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over my Bowers & Wilkins 802s (read my review). I asked them what they would like to hear and they were clear in their desire to hear some Led Zepplin. A smile came to my face and an iPad to my hand as these two young men were sitting on their new Room and Board Metro sofa. By the time the intro of “The Song Remains the Same” from Houses of the Holy was over (about a minute of music) I had created a heroin-like addiction in these young, tech-savvy men. That is two of them when we need 20,000. 

Conversely, and to no fault of the promoters, but when I was up in Seattle for that somewhat ill-fated and very poorly time regional show (same weekend as CEDIA), I saw not one but literally two older men actually and physically fall down in the hallway. I am not making fun of these older audiophiles whatsoever. Hell, I helped pick them physically up from the ground but these folks are some more seasoned audiophiles. It is painful for many in my gender to admit this but women hear better than men especially over time. They also actuarily live longer than men by a few years. There comes a time in one’s life when spending tens of thousands of dollars on audiophile components isn’t part of the overall plan. The audiophile industry as a whole got a reprieve from this demographic reality during the COVID-19 pandemic as the OG “original audiophile gangsta” were back to spending their discretionary money on music, audio and whatnot as they were stuck at home like the rest of us. Note: the pandemic is long over now and that means the core audiophile audience is even more aged. 

Little Focus Goes Into Affordable Gear

Capital Audiofest in Bethesda, Maryland is one of the better regional audiophile shows every calendar year. It oddly benefits from the sad passing of the founder of Rocky Mountain Audiofest which was, in the somewhat recent past, the best audiophile show in the United States for more than a decade before the show simply stopped happening.

Based in the Denver Tech Center, RMAF was a show hosted at a somewhat dumpy Marriott but its fall timing was perfect and towards the end, it had international reach. One thing that the show did that was visionary and something that AXPONA is trying to do in the modern era (just a little bit) is have rooms designed for audiophiles without unlimited budgets. $600,000 for a DAC or $1,000,000 for a pair of speakers isn’t for “one percenters” as much as it is luxury good designed for the 902 billionaires (source: Forbes) who live in the United States or the 2,800 of them worldwide. And even if you can spend Wildy like that on audiophile components, no enthusiast starts out in the hobby that way. You need somewhere to start in the hobby. For many Generation Xers like me, NAD gear was a Nancy Reagan level audiophile gateway drug in the 1980s. Concurrently, ADCOM influenced many a yuppie in that era. Before that, McIntosh was truly inspirational with our original audiophiles in the 1960s. You need to start somewhere. My first car was a 1992 Volkswagen GTI – purchased new from the VW, Porsche, Audi dealer in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. My next car was a newer GTI with a V6 power plant but by the time that I was 22, I was driving an air-cooled 1995 guard’s red with cashmere colored interior Porsche 911 (C2 – 993 for the Porsche enthusiasts) which I ultimately showed in the Porsche Club and won countless Concours D’Elegance awards. That car got stolen so I acted like any respectable audiophile and upgraded to a 1997 Porche 911 C4S (all-wheel drive with flared fenders, cool wheels etc…). That car got sold because there was a Twin Turbo 911 from the same era and well before I was 30 years old, I owned an air cooled Twin Turbo 911. I sold it for $85,000 used and it sells for $500,000 today and Dan D’Agostino (Krell founder and leader of his namesake company) never fails to jokingly remind me.

So what is today’s audiophile version of a VW GTI? 

They are out there but they don’t get the hype because too many audiophile manufacturers and retailers don’t have the vision to market to a next generation of clients. That concept is the core of our mission statement at FutureAudiophile.com but it isn’t shared buy everybody in the business including those panicked over tariffs. They are right to be panicked but not as much over ignorant tariffs but over demographic issues.

In General, Women Love Music But Not Necessarily the Audiophile Hobby

Women love music. Women love technology. Younger women use headphones in every aspect of their life – could they be wooed to someday invest is something a little bit upmarket? Perhaps, they could if we had more female voices in the hobby. My last female editor left my old publication to run the consumer electronic section of The New York Times’ very useful, Wirecutter property. Have I tried to hire other women to write about audiophile gear/matters as I have with younger male audiophiles like Nasim, Eric and Andrew? Oh boy, have I tried. Moreover, I am not done trying. My wife put me in touch with some Women in Tech groups based in San Franciso but disappointingly nobody responded to my outreach. In blatant acts of being an extrovert, I will talk with a female audiophile if I ever see one at a show or event but that needs to be done carefully as to not come across creepy. 

More female (or just diverse or unique) voices talking about the modern advantages of the hobby, like health or anxiety, would be a welcomed change. There are a few women talking about collecting vinyl on YouTube.com. There is my good friend, Andrew Robinson’s wife, who chimes in on his videos but there needs to be far more than this level of involvement to fix the gender part of the audiophile hobby’s demographic problem. (Email me if you know of leads for me to add more diversity to the FutureAudiophile.com staff – “self-imposed DEI” is alive and well here just like at Apple).

How Do We Fix the Demographic Problem in the Audiophile Hobby?

We just dealt with the male/female split as they call it on Madison Avenue ad agency world but the hobby’s demographic issue are far more complex. Would adding half of the living humans on the planet to our potential hobby seems like it has some math behind it but there are other things that we can do also?

1. Promote younger voices – This is our “special sauce” at FutureAudiophile.com in terms of content. We have reviewers who reflect the hobby and its future consumers. Jim Swantko is a 54 year old engineer (with an Masters/EE) who owns world class Rockport, Weiss, CH Precision and Wireworld gear. Brian Kahn is our most tenured reviewers and he’s roughly the same age, a partner at a major West Los Angeles law firm and a voice for someone still buying gear. Nasim Abu-Dagga is a Gen Z reviewer who races Porsches and just bought his first condo at 24. He knows what audio does for him and makes the most of his budget to buy gear. We need to start to embrace younger and more diverse voices to promote the hobby in more meaningful ways.
2. Audiophile Gear Doesn’t Have To Be Expensive To Be Good – Pound this concept into any audiophile that will listen. CHI-FI (learn more here) is a good thing. When the audiophile establishment (many of whom refuse to advertise with us because of our support of more affordable gear) is fighting having any kind of entry level gear in the hobby. That is ignorant and shortsighted. I know the Lamborghini on the cover of the car magazine sells more copies but far more people are looking to buy that Subaru WRX than a $250,000 purple Uris. 
3. Embrace New Technologies: Don’t Fight Them – The modern Class D amp movement (GaN-FET, Hypex, Pascal chips) replace hot, bulky and inefficient tube and Class A designed ampswith cool running, semiconductor-based amps that are changing out world. Do you need big Threshold-like 100 pound monoblocks with massive heat synchs sitting on a chunk of granite next to your speakers? In today’s audiophile market, perhaps not so much? For the young audiophile getting premium performance without the grief and/or the cost is a strong reason why to upgrade and continue in the hobby. For far too long, the elders have fought new technology. Do you know kids who do that? No, you don’t.
4. Be More Inclusive – Find people that you think might enjoy or benefit from owning an audiophile system and invite them over. Play them your music. Let them play some of theirs. Maybe take them to a local audio store to hear other products. Talk about how to build a great system without spending a fortune. Most of us had a mentor or two coming up in the audiophile hobby. My childhood best friend’s Dad was one for me. Mark Levinson was another for me. Mike Prager does this with members of the Portland Audiophile Society. Paul Wilson does the same thing with the Carolina Audiophile Society, which he runs. 
5. Build a small, alternative audiophile system – Assuming you are an established audiophile in the hobby – maybe you can take the price of a pair of good speaker cables and invest in a small system for another room be it a bedroom, an office – even the garage. What can a $99 or $169 integrated amp do for you? You might be shocked. How do $500 a pair speakers image? Perhaps, better than you think even if you have $30,000 monsters (like me) in your living room. Don’t spend a fortune but knowing what you know now as a veteran in the hobby, how would you start out in the audiophile world. I bet your new, entry level system will sound shockingly good when you are all done with it. 
6. Donate your gear when you are done with it – Audiogon.com and eBay.com are great to liquidate your audiophile gear. Many of my staff are using The Music Room in Colorado to buy their gear and that’s all good to eke out every penny but what if you donated some of your gear to a school, a local youth program or just to a local kid who would love to own a killer system in high school. A few hundred bucks is not nothing but it could go towards badly needed outreach to younger audiences. 
7. Join and become active an audiophile society – These clubs can introduce you to new people who are at different stages of their audiophile journey. Learn what their challenges are which likely could be different than yours. Talk with them about possible next system moves, acoustical treatments, where to best buy gear locally and beyond. This is very much of a “walk a mile in another man’s shoes” experience and could be really helpful to the hobby.

Some Final Thoughts on the Audiophile Hobby’s Demographic Problem …

Take it from me that it is humbling to try to take on this daunting challenge. Audiophiles just don’t like change. In fact, they tend to often fight it. In the establishment audiophile world, vinyl wasn’t cool until the Compact Disc was released in 1983. Music streaming allows you to hear tons of music in HD for $15 a month but there are many audiophiles who still spin silver discs. 

This process is anything but easy but it can be fun and rewarding. The days of fighting new technology, worshiping the past and being anything-but-inclusive is going to die one way or another. Let’s kill these behaviors off and set the audiophile hobby up for decades of future success. 

How would you propose that we deal with the demographic problem in the hobby? Are there any stories (little or big acts) that you can tell us about on how you brought new people into the hobby? Please share with us your thoughts and we will post your comments quickly in our moderated comments.