It's interesting to note the recent proliferation of fairly new online high-end audio mags (Tone, 6Moons, Affordable Audio, etc), blogs (SonicFlare, Audiojunkies, The Audiophiliac, etc.), and Forums (ML Club, Audiocircle, Computer Audiophile, etc.). It seems the editors/owners of these sites are competing for the same dwindling number of readers and advertising $$. I guess Jeff (Tone) could give us the best perspective on the worldwide audiophile market, if he is bold enough to share it with us!
I think the audiophile market is .00001 %.
That's why TONE really isn't positioned as an audiophile magazine, we consider it a music magazine that happens to be excited about good gear. It's easy if you compare the numbers. TAS has been around for 33 years and they have 33 thousand readers. Stereophile has been around for over 40 years and they have about 70 thousand.
We're in our fourth year now and have just over 150 thousand readers in 104 countries.
The big picture though, are magazines like Rolling Stone (2.5 million readers), SPIN (about a million readers), Paste (700k) readers and the like.
What does this mean?
There are a ton of people out there that love music that either don't know that our world exists or don't care.
If you look at Stereophile or TAS (or the other online guys for that matter), they have six or seven pages of music at the back of the issue. Stereophile I think does a better job, as the occassionally interview a musician.
We usually have 30-50 pages of music right up front. We are covering live shows, interviewing musicians and trying to write about new music as close to the release dates as we can, while still talking about classics and audiophile discs too.
Look at the last 4 years of Stereophile covers. Same thing every issue. A close up shot of a piece of gear on an angle, with a headline proclaiming that this or that is "the Best" or "Unbelievable", etc, etc. Most of our covers are pictures of musicians or people from the audio industry. We've only featured gear on the cover twice, the Sooloos music server and the Wadia iPod dock.
My theory was that if we could get them in the door for music, they would stay for the gear, because everyone needs something to play their tunes on eventually. From the feedback we've been getting, it appears to be working quite well. A lot of people have called or written saying that they have been reading the magazine for the music, but have just bought something based on one of our reviews and they enjoy it.
We have also branched out in to some associated lifestyle articles, with excellent success. Our readers surveys and letters/calls indicates that our readers also enjoy Cars, Motorcycles, bicycles, cameras, watches, travel, liquor, golf and guns. No one on the staff likes to golf or shoot, so you won't see any of those articles, but while we will keep this section small, it's always fun to give you a little something extra to read. Also, whenever we can tie it in to music or hifi, we will do so.
The audiophile market as we knew it is dying. But the good news is that there are a lot of music lovers in the audience with the interest and the means to buy a good system. I'd like to welcome those people to the fold, because some of them will become obsessed audiophiles too, but we have to get people in the door!
Everyone on my staff that writes about hifi has a great system, but we all came to this world because we loved music and felt that music played back on a great system sounds better than music played back on a lousy one.
In the end I don't feel like we are competing with them, we are a different animal. While my heart will always be with the hardcore audiophiles, because that's where I grew up, but we need to get more people to the dance and articles with charts and graphs about distortion figures aren't going to get them here...
This was my goal from the beginning to build something that was more than just a bunch of gear reviews.
My opinion, but it does appear to be working.