Baby boomers give second life to older rockers

	By Terry Pierson, AP
	James Young, left, and Tommy Shaw of the band Styx found their fans hadn't forgotten them.

By David Lieberman, USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Rock and pop band Styx had a simple idea in 1996. More than a decade after the original lineup split, members planned to reunite for a one-shot tour to give their now middle-age fans a trip down memory lane, listening to 1970s hits including Babe and Come Sail Away.

But once they hit the road, they saw a surprising phenomenon.

"The fans were there like we'd never left," says singer-guitarist Tommy Shaw, who'd left Styx in 1983. "We went from being a band that got back together to go around the block one more time, and got focused."

Since then, Styx tours have consistently been among the year's 50 top grossers. They now plan to return to the studio to record new songs.

They stumbled on a trend in music that either intrigues or befuddles many in the troubled, youth-obsessed industry. Baby boomers are back.

"The population is aging, and we're finding that (older) consumers are more musically active than they were 10 years ago," says David Weyner, general manager of Bertelsmann's adult-oriented RCA Victor Group.

While teens and young adults still dominate the market, their hold is weakening. The over-35 crowd bought about 44% of music sold in 2000, the last year for which industry figures are available, up from about 28% in 1991.

And they aren't just interested in aging rockers. A generation that grew up on eclectic Top 40 is also turning on to blues, roots music, world music, jazz, soundtracks, show tunes and New Age.

Older buyers were key to the surprising success last year of the Beatles' 1 greatest hits collection, the bluegrass O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and New Age performer Enya's A Day Without Rain.

"I was exposed to Miles Davis along with Jethro Tull in a more free-flowing way than kids are now," Weyner says. "You have an incredibly educated music consumer from a time when we still had music education."

To a limited extent, over-35 fans also are regaining status as trendsetters.

"I see a lot of younger people out there" at concerts, says Bad Company singer Paul Rogers, who rejoined the band in 1998. "It's going across the generations as parents play music for their kids."

Older fans' growing interest in music also is one of the few bright spots for a business in a funk.

The companies that dominate music — Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann, AOL Time Warner, Sony and EMI — watched in frustration last year as hitmakers such as the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Lenny Kravitz, Madonna, Jewel and Garth Brooks failed to match earlier successes. (Four of the five companies also had no executives willing to comment for this story.)

Nobody epitomized the maddeningly fickle nature of pop better than Mariah Carey. A best-selling singer in the 1990s, her latest release, Glitter, bombed. U.S. sales of only about 500,000 copies resulted in an estimated $10 million loss for EMI. The company decided in January to cut its losses and pay her $28 million to get out of their multi-album contract.

"The bloom is off the rose for pop, and we're waiting for the next new thing," says former Bertelsmann Music Group chief Strauss Zelnick, who now runs investment firm ZelnickMedia.

Music executives want something to happen soon. Unit sales last year of album-length CDs and cassettes fell nearly 3%, to about 763 million.

But there's no turnaround in sight. Retailers sold 6.6% fewer albums in the first few weeks of 2002 than in the comparable period last year. Total revenue from music sales — which dropped from $14 billion in 2000 to $13 billion in 2001 — will inch to $13.1 billion in 2002, Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Michael Nathanson estimates.

Several problems are exacerbating the music malaise.

"From 1996 to 2001, there's been no growth in worldwide unit sales — none," Nathanson says. "It's a bigger issue than just getting a few more hits."

Oldies not always seen as goodies

With all this uncertainty in pop music, you might expect executives to cultivate the growing, loyal and affluent older audience.

Not so. Many music companies consider it a distraction from their main mission: finding the next hot trend while keeping costs low. Those imperatives prompted several labels to drop veteran acts.

	Reuters
	1960's rock group The Beatles.

"It's amazing how disposable major labels consider artists to be. They flip people the way some flip stocks," says Tom Lipsky, president of Sanctuary Records Group North America, a company that specializes in older bands. "A major label requires a lot of fuel to generate its international machine, and that requires big sales. Their core model is to market to teenagers and young adults. They can't afford to concentrate on niche marketing."

That has opened a big opportunity for Sanctuary, as well as other, smaller, labels. It won gold records (at least 500,000 copies sold) and gold DVDs (at least 50,000 sold) for the CD and video versions of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Lyve From Steel Town and Styx's Return to Paradise performance.

Those sales might pale next to those for 'N Sync. But the strategy let Sanctuary, publicly traded in London, defy the music industry recession. It nearly doubled revenue and net profit in the year ended Sept. 30.

It takes effort, though, to find venues where older listeners can hear new music or learn about reissues.

Concerts are key.

"We usually will not sign a band unless they're actively touring," Lipsky says. "We intensely market at tour sites." One reason: "The new records these groups put out don't get the overwhelming acceptance of radio."

Some radio executives say labels blunder by not buying ads for veteran bands' new releases and boxed sets on the 618 classic rock stations.

"There's never been a time when this kind of situation existed," says Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media, a consulting firm that helped to develop the format in 1984. "There are so many potential buyers out there who aren't aware that this material exists. Classic rock stations don't exist in the eyes of most record companies."

But record companies don't deserve all the blame. Many classic rock stations won't play new music. And many performers don't believe radio ads sell albums.

"Most smart managers and artists, when they do a marketing campaign, ask that most of the money be spent on TV advertising," says TBA Entertainment's Charlie Brusco, who manages veteran acts including Journey, Foreigner and Eddie Money. "A lot of people pick up the phone and order (CDs). They don't want to be bothered going to stores."

Finding fans

Since the older audience is hard to pin down, and has such varied taste, performers hunt for unconventional venues to reach it.

Many crave airtime on NBC's venerable Today show and VH1's Behind the Music. "When artists are on, you see a big jump in their catalog sales," Brusco says.

Older performers also get a jolt when advertisers use their work. Bad Company saw the medium's power when Burger King used its hit Can't Get Enough.

"I hate to mention it, but some of the ads have kept the songs alive," says Rogers. Styx's revival is due, in part, to Volkswagen's use of its Mr. Roboto, Shaw says.

Perhaps the best example of an ad selling music was when Sting's album Brand New Day took off after Jaguar featured him and his tune Desert Rose in ads.

But older acts also reach fans through non-commercial media. For example, PBS stations frequently air classic pop (and popular classical) concerts to draw viewers to fund-raising telethons.

"Public TV has been absolutely essential, ever since (stations broadcast) The Three Tenors," Weyner says. "Those shows were the match that lit the flame."

National Public Radio's flagship shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, also have become powerful promoters of new, adult-oriented music.

Singer-songwriter Oh Susanna learned that in January. Sleepy Little Sailor was the 50,631st best-selling CD on Amazon.com the day before she was featured on All Things Considered. The next day, it leapt to No. 124.

Even the musical interludes between different news and feature stories generate sales. NPR highlights many of them on its Web site, which has a page called "All Songs Considered."

"Guitarists Martin Simpson and Adrien Legg are two we've featured," says All Things Considered director Bob Boilen. And listeners couldn't get enough of Hawaiian singer Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole's rendition of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

"There are millions of us out there," Boilen says. "We're music starved. I get letters every day that start, 'Thank you, thank you.'"