Overlooked
You don't believe me? You think received wisdom (sure they're avid, sure they're affluent, but such small numbers... it just ain't worth our while) still holds. Maybe. But take a look at some of the related news groups. Not long ago I stumbled into rec.music.classical.recordings, expecting to find a languorous, elitist, condescending bunch of intellectual-esthetic bullshit. Wrong. It's a hotbed (hundreds of submissions daily) of upbeat, energetic discussion about classical music. Lots of deep enthusiasm, and far below the usual level of flaming one finds in such hyperactive groups. Or, to get into an even smaller niche of this small niche: take a look at rec.music.makers.piano. Mostly about people learning (or wanting to learn) to play classical piano, questions about music books and which pieces to play, and problems playing the music. And lots of talk about the instrument (both acoustic and digital pianos). Truly astonishing. Other news groups in literature reflect a similar level of intense interest and enthusiasm. The sense one gets after reading these groups for a few weeks is 1) of pleasure that the participants have found like-minded souls to talk to, and 2) an unspoken awareness of how totally neglected they are in the global marketing explosion at the end of the millennium. The marketer who figures out how to reach them will have found Cibola.
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Long lost in their lunkhead mentality, marketers are overlooking one
rich, avid, active niche: high culture, mainly classical music and literature. Maybe it's
just that nobody has figured out how to reach this comparatively small population. But the
level of their interest, plus their money, ought to give the capitalist demographers
plenty of pause.