[Dixielandjazz] Music for old people

[Stephen G Barbone]

You know you are getting really old when the AARP music for old people  
starts with Paul Simon, Elvis, The Beatles etc.

For our overseas members, AARP is: "American Association of Retired  
People" a lobbying group to which many of us old farts belong. Their  
total old fart membership is 37 million or so.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

AARP Begins an Internet Radio Service, Mixing Familiar Hits With New  
Artists

NY TIMES - By BEN SISARIO - July 4 2011


With constantly changing technology, and blogs that cover the latest  
indie bands minute-by-minute, online music is usually considered a  
young person’s game. But now the AARP, one of the biggest symbols of  
life in the gray years, is betting that a custom digital player on its  
Web site will rekindle its members’ love for discovering new music.

Last month AARP quietly introduced a free Internet radio service for  
listeners 50 and older, with 18 channels programmed by the Concord  
Music Group, an independent record company that releases music by baby  
boomer stars like Paul Simon and Paul McCartney. The idea, according  
to Hugh Delehanty, editor in chief of AARP’s publications, is for the  
organization to act as a guide for millions of older listeners who are  
curious but may be intimidated by digital music.

“We’ve always been trying to reach this audience, because we know that  
boomers are so passionate about music,” Mr. Delehanty said. “We also  
feel that because of changes in format and whatnot, a lot of them have  
gotten lost in terms of how to find their music.”

The player is embedded into AARP’s site, and its design was kept  
simple for ease of navigation, with buttons only for playing and  
pausing a song, and skipping ahead to the next one. The channels,  
which will each have about 500 songs in rotation, will also be  
restricted to a handful of recognizable genres, like jazz, classic R&B  
and coffeehouse folk.

Eighteen channels of AARP-approved music might conjure endless hours  
of innocuous oldies. But with the Woodstock generation now entering  
retirement age, rock and soul of the 1960s and ’70s loom large on the  
service. Marc Morgenstern, Concord’s chief market and asset  
development officer, said his goal was to mix new music with the old.

“Older people get a bum rap, that they’re kind of frozen in time,” Mr.  
Morgenstern said in an interview at Concord’s office in Beverly Hills,  
where the walls are lined with posters of Creedence Clearwater Revival  
and Elvis Costello as well as some of the label’s younger stars, like  
Alison Krauss.

“Everyone has a certain affinity for the music of their youth,” he  
added. “But people really do want to find something new, something  
that may not stray far from what they’re familiar with but bring a  
huge gust of fresh air.”

One channel, Modern Hits, includes current chart-toppers by acts like  
Katy Perry and Kelly Clarkson (“you heard these hits on the radio or  
at a friend’s house,” reads the description). And in a bit of  
generational irony, the player was created by Slacker, a fast-rising  
Internet radio company that recently signed a deal to power AOL’s  
online radio service.

The costs of AARP’s service, which include royalty payments for music  
as well as editorial expenses for a section of the site dedicated to  
articles and interviews on music, will be paid through advertising.  
AARP and Concord will share any profits.

Older listeners have long been recognized in the music industry as the  
demographic group most attached to physical CDs, which tend to be much  
more profitable for record companies than digital music. People 36 and  
older are responsible for about 60 percent of the revenue from CD  
sales, according to a study last year by the NPD Group that was  
commissioned by the Recording Industry Association of America.

That tendency has benefited Concord, which in addition to its current  
releases controls large catalogs of R&B and jazz. The company has  
grown rapidly as much of the rest of the recorded music industry has  
shrunk; last year Concord had a projected $100 million in revenue, 10  
times the level of 2003.

But with Apple’s iTunes now eight years old, and digital services like  
Pandora finding mainstream success, older consumers are becoming more  
comfortable with digital music. And with 37 million members, AARP  
provides a huge potential audience.

“We’re still early on with online music and content in general,” said  
Mike McGuire, a media analyst at Gartner. “People are now starting to  
think of how to mine some of that mass of data and how to segment  
audiences.”