Incidentally, two people I spoke to last week were Victor Hochhauser's son and Tash, the head of UMG Classical (DGG, Decca, Hyperion and other labels).
Victor was by far the greatest classical music promoter of his generation. He learned Russian, went to Russia when Stalin was still the boss, persuaded them to allow the likes of Oistrakh, Shostakovich, Gilels and Richter to tour in the West and promoted them like no one else had done before, with huge success. He popularised a dusty industry.
Tash is (a) in her 30's, (b) a woman and (c) has a haircut never before seen in the classical musical world. She is tasked with breathing new life into classical music, and she's doing a fine job. One thing she's doing much like Victor, is taking some star talent like Lang Lang and promoting it to death. We bumped into her at a Max Richter premiere at Covent Garden, he's one of her key artists, because he's "classical" who mixes with electronica, tape loops and brings in a new audience. The crowd was very young and trendy, not the normal Covent Garden mob.
Going to Sadlers Wells tonight with our oldest friends. Their daughter is a hugely successfully photographer, she does major shoots for global campaigns for some of the biggest brands, from Neymar for Puma, Nike, Adidas, Dr Martens, Manchester City and many more.
She's 27 years old.
She's the age of her audience. That said Yves St Laurent changed the fashion industry when he was 21 years old.
Half, or more than half the problem, of high end hifi seems to be that it is designed by old people for old people. The comments here don't surprise me. It could probably do with younger people to take new products to younger people. I doubt that will happen to any significant degree because high-end audio is such a small product category. My son is a product designer and I suspect people his age are designing audio products for people his age that will make most people hear turn away in disgust.