Two new market niches for rock 'n roll: the AARP over-50 crowd, and parents who want their 3-year-olds to have hip ears

1. Rock of Ages -- by JEFF LEEDS/NY Times

AT 52, Martha Stinson is not quite sure where to turn when it comes to new music. The local Tower Records in Nashville, where Mrs. Stinson is an owner a general contracting company, is going out of business, and she never did figure out how to load music onto the digital-music player she bought a couple of years ago.

But she may soon receive an overture from a source not known for its musical savvy: AARP . She is the kind of consumer that the association is targeting with a sweeping marketing campaign that it hopes will entice millions of new members, as the first kids weaned on rock ’n’ roll turn gray.

And if Mrs. Stinson is any indication, the group faces an uphill battle. She has repeatedly thrown out AARP membership solicitations, after all. “It’s going to be tough,” to market to those like her, she said. “Our generation has always been a little revolutionary. We feel like we’re in middle age. Were out bike riding, running businesses. Our kids are fully grown, and we’re kind of footloose and fancy free.”

Older consumers (along with children) represent one of the few reliable markets in the music business these days, and AARP, the organization for older Americans, is keen to capitalize on that. On Tuesday the group announced that for the first time it will sponsor a national concert tour, by Tony Bennett . And that’s just a start. Other sponsorships will follow, and from those, AARP hopes, many new members. With plans in the works for an alliance with a major retail chain, a Web-based music recommendation service with Pandora and even a music blog, AARP is looking to graduate from advocate of the shuffleboard set to the ranks of cultural concierge.

“I hope that we make this thing so relevant and so cool,” said Tena Clark, a music consultant helping to devise the group’s marketing strategy. “I would hope that one day in the future that my 20-year-old daughter would want to borrow my AARP card to get into a concert just like she tries to borrow her sister’s I.D.”

Consumers like Ms. Stinson may not be the only skeptics however. For musicians, a deal with AARP is a different matter than a deal with a hip coffee house or a fashion retailer. No matter how hard the group may try to change its image — even with the likes of Paul McCartney and Susan Sarandon on the cover of its magazine — some people still associate it with the Saturday-night-bingo set. And many musicians may want to keep their distance, even if it means sacrificing enormous sales.

“The problem is going to be getting the artists to allow, next to their name, those four feared initials,” said Jonny Podell, the longtime talent agent who books appearances for artists including the Allman Brothers Band, Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel. “I’m the agent for half a dozen acts they’re going to want,” Mr. Podell said, and “short of saying, ‘In addition to your normal fee we’re giving you $1 million in cash,’ I don’t think they’d have one taker.” For the artists, he said, “It’s about not admitting they’re old.” For his part Mr. Podell, who is 60, said he has been receiving AARP entreaties for years, and each time “I drop it like a hot potato.”

Jan Reisen, who along with her partner Peter Kooiker runs the Web site aginghipsters.com , said she plans to join AARP at some point to take advantage of financial benefits like discounts on insurance, rental cars and hotels. But as for recommending albums, “If I want to know about cool music, I’ll ask my 22-year-old.”

Whether AARP succeeds in its new venture, it’s on to something significant. Like Madison Avenue it is responding to the marketing challenge posed by the huge but fickle post-war generation, which for the last 60 years has driven cultural trends from hula hoops to the S.U.V. Consumers over 50 used to make marketers’ eyes glaze over. The assumption was that older buyers’ spending habits had solidified and their earning power had peaked. No longer.

Now they control too much disposable income — and live too long — to be ignored. And nowhere is the shift in attitudes more pronounced than in the beleaguered pop music business, which desperately needs their money (who do you think is buying all those $750 Barbra Streisand tickets?) and shares their aversion to illicit music downloads.

The graying of the music market crept up on America. Even during the ascent of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys in the late 1990s, when teen sensations were getting all the attention, consumers 45 and older were the industry’s biggest market, according to survey data compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America . The gap has only widened since then. Last year fans 45 and older accounted for 25.5 percent of sales, while older teenagers (a group more prone to music piracy) represented less than 12 percent. So it’s little wonder that Rod Stewart’s raspy remakes of pop standards emerged as a franchise, or that Bob Dylan in September captured the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart for the first time in 30 years.

The trick is that conventional marketing techniques don’t always work with this group (if they work with anyone anymore). Older listeners don’t have much interest in traditional commercial radio, which targets children and young adults, as do TV channels like VH1 and MTV. And they don’t spend much time in traditional record stores.

So labels, publicists and marketers have had to learn new tricks to reach them. Older acts show up not on MTV’s “TRL” (Total Request Live) but on morning shows like “Today,” and hawk their wares in infomercials and TV mail-order ads. Instead of seeking Top 40 radio airplay, they look to National Public Radio and satellite radio. And to entice more casual consumers, artists now regularly guarantee exclusive recordings to mass retailers like Target or high-end chains that cater to grown-ups.

While Starbucks is the most prominent example, other chains are finding their own niche. James Taylor struck platinum with a CD that was initially sold only in Hallmark stores. Nordstrom has introduced music to its offerings, starting with a previously out-of-print Marvin Gaye release and an exclusive CD from the jazz-tinged singer-songwriter Jamie Cullum.

But perhaps the most surprising results have been online, where the over-50 set accounted for almost 24 percent of the industry’s Internet sales, according to NPD Group, a market-research company.

While these consumers didn’t grow up with the Internet, they have grown comfortable with using it, at least to order CDs if not download music in digital form. All of that helps account for why Amazon.com’s recent Top 10 included Mr. Bennett’s hit “Duets: An American Classic” CD, the new collaboration from J. J. Cale and Eric Clapton, and holiday albums from James Taylor and Bette Midler , while over at iTunes, the best sellers were rap hits from the Game, Akon and the pop-punk band Plus-44.

Overall, marketers say, older consumers need to be made comfortable. So House of Blues, the concert promoter, found that it could boost ticket sales for older artists by offering pre-show dinners or wine tastings. Sometimes they added seating in clubs that had required fans to stand.

AARP is heeding such lessons by developing the machinery of modern tastemaking. That means bulking up its Web site with music offerings, licensing the Pandora online radio and recommendation service, and negotiating for shelf space at a major retail chain, which would carry exclusive versions of certain CDs with discounts to AARP members. And of course it will advertise at Mr. Bennett’s concerts and perhaps sign up new members there too.

Thanks in part to Target and Starbucks, his “Duets” album has racked up the biggest sales of his career (almost 650,000 copies in its first seven weeks). Mr. Bennett’s son and manager, Danny Bennett, said the album is succeeding because it appeals not to older buyers specifically, but to a wide swatch of the audience. And that multi-generational appeal, the younger Mr. Bennett said, is what makes his father a perfect ally for AARP. “It’s not a matter of ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.’ It’s ‘Let’s stay healthy so we can rock.’ Tony’s the poster child for AARP. He’s 80 years old. He’s young at heart.”

AARP seems intent on a more generation-specific approach, putting its stamp on albums individually chosen for older consumers.

As for the wary artists, in an era when record labels are cutting back on marketing expenses, AARP, with about 37 million members, could be a great, rich friend to have. The message is not lost on the labels. Jay Krugman, senior vice president for marketing at Columbia Records (which released Mr. Bennett’s CD) calls the group “like the golden chalice.”

Elton John performed at the association’s “Life @50+” convention in Anaheim, Calif., last month; officials said they have booked Rod Stewart and Earth, Wind & Fire for next year. James Taylor played two years ago, and the group’s magazine has named him as one of the hottest people over 50. (He was listed under the “babelicious baldies” category.)

His manager, Gary Borman, acknowledges that for artists who still compete for radio airplay and television exposure, “their reputation could be somewhat tainted” by an AARP affiliation. “On the other hand, for many, many of these artists, they’re no longer playing that radio and record game and they just want to serve their fans and keep them coming back.”

“Our generation,” he concluded, “as much as we were once intuitive discoverers of music, we have lost that intuition. And now we need to be spoon fed.”


2. Market for Hipsters-in-Training -- by TAMMY LA GORCE/NY Times

CASEY BONHAM LETO, age 5 months, wasn’t to blame. Neither were his parents. Right down to his rock ’n’ roll middle name — a tribute to Led Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham — everything had been done to bestow him with rock-kid credibility at the earliest possible age: On the floor of the puff-cheeked baby’s living room in Jersey City were toy guitars and a set of Metallica nesting dolls. On his powder-blue onesie pajamas, in gothic script, were the words “My crib rocks.”

Yet when his father recently unwrapped a new CD of ’80s British alternative rock reimagined expressly for babies, Casey was indifferent. As “Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of the Cure” played on the stereo, he kicked fitfully in his bouncy seat. He appeared not to recognize the wordless glockenspiel-and-vibraphone rendition of the Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry.” Within seconds he spit up.

His parents, though, liked what they heard.

“This is hilarious,” said his mother, Pam Leto, a music publicist who works with bands like My Morning Jacket and Eagles of Death Metal.

“It’s actually really soothing,” said her husband, Dave Leto, the tattooed drummer for the indie rock band Rye Coalition.

It was the kind of reaction — hook the parents, never mind the kid — that Lisa Roth was looking for when she founded Baby Rock, the Los Angeles label behind the kiddie Cure album and lullaby tributes to Metallica, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Led Zeppelin, the Beach Boys, Tool and Coldplay released this year.

Almost the reaction, anyway.

“I’d love for the parents to say, ‘Wow, this is really funny,’ and for the baby to fall asleep,” said Ms. Roth, 48. “It would also be great if it was like Rock 101 between parent and baby. A steppingstone.”

To be a parent in 2006 — especially a coastal, well-heeled, contemporary-minded one — is to be blasted by possibilities for nurturing impeccable musical taste in one’s offspring. The commercial successes, like Disney’s “Baby Einstein” series of albums, have been widely noted on the Billboard charts and in Wal-Mart shopping carts. But they overshadow a hipper niche of kid music that is encouraging a curious form of parental connoisseurship, where “High Fidelity” meets high chairs.

That this ballooning genre is meant as much for the parents as the children, and probably more, is readily acknowledged by some of those producing and buying it.

“Parents are looking at music as a gift you give your children, as something you discover with them,” said Kevin Salem, a rock record producer in Woodstock, N.Y. “Sharing it is a way of making sure music stays in good hands.”

With his wife, Kate Hyman, Mr. Salem formed Little Monster Records in part to guarantee that their 4-year-old daughter, Emily, is exposed to what her parents consider to be good music, like the label’s “All Together Now,” a Beatles tribute featuring Steve Conte of the New York Dolls, the Bangles and others that is being sold exclusively through Barnes & Noble. Its placement in time for the holidays is so far paying off: “All Together Now” landed at No. 84 on Barnes & Noble’s list of top sellers the day of its release.

“Sesame Street” can probably be credited with (or blamed for) helping to create the modern idea of kids’ music as a socially loaded part of a parent’s developmental tool kit. Pop science too. “Baby Einstein,” begun in 1997, prompted new parents to engage infants musically in the name of healthy brain building; based largely on word of mouth, sales figures reached the multimillions by 2001, when Disney bought the company. Fueling the trend are mass-media tie-ins like this year’s “Sing-A-Longs and Lullabies for the Film ‘Curious George’ ” (Brushfire/Universal), the Jack Johnson project that made its debut at the top of the Billboard album chart.

According to executives with a rash of new indie labels and children’s music blogs like the Lovely Mrs. Davis ( lovelydavis.blogspot.com ), this kind of music really took off in 2002, when Dan Zanes, formerly of the roots-rock band the Del Fuegos, reimagined what worthwhile children’s music could sound like. His CD “Rocket Ship Beach” (Festival Five), recorded in his Brooklyn basement with friends like Suzanne Vega, sneaked up on parents with likable, sharable songs and a homespun sensibility. Mr. Zanes clearly struck the right chord, and has created a kiddie-entertainment empire that includes videos, concerts and even a partnership with Starbucks for this year’s “Catch That Train!” (Festival Five).

Mr. Zanes has a lot of company these days. Ralph Covert, of the grown-up band Bad Examples and the family-friendly Ralph’s World, has built a cottage industry to rival that of Mr. Zanes. Other artists who have dipped into kiddie rock include the country-punk singer Jason Ringenberg, the all-girl band Luscious Jackson and members of the Mekons, who tried on alter egos in the band Wee Hairy Beasties, whose album “Animal Crackers” (Bloodshot Records) came out in October.

It is doubtful that they will all equal the success of Mr. Zanes, whose grass-roots Internet marketing and local parental support have helped “Catch That Train!” sell 125,000 copies. But their market sense isn’t unfounded.

Christopher Noxon, author of “Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up” (Crown), identifies an emerging demographic of 30-plus, forever-young-minded Lucky Charms eaters aiming to reset the boundaries of adulthood. He says it’s little wonder their children are being turned into rock fans, at least in their parents’ eyes.

“Their parents encourage it,” Mr. Noxon said. “They think it’s funny and that it sets them apart. Plus, if you listen to that music now, like I do way too often, you realize it’s kids’ music: three chords dressed up with all this distortion.”

Such parents can take credit for the success of this summer’s Kidzapalooza, the two-year-old arm of the Chicago-based rock festival Lollapalooza, which lured a crowd of 160,000, up from 2,000 in 2005. The attractions included a “rock ’n’ roll petting zoo,” where children could get behind a professional drum kit while parents rocked out on guitar or bass, and a hip-hop workshop where children still in strollers burned rap CDs with professional disc jockeys. Among the performers were Patti Smith and Perry Farrell, the former frontman of Jane’s Addiction and the founder of Lollapalooza.

“People in their 30s and 40s aren’t really grown up, and they don’t want to grow up,” said David Agnew, a vice president of the Buena Vista Music Group and the force behind this year’s “Devo 2.0,” which repurposed old Devo songs for 4- to 10-year-olds and their parents. (Next year Mr. Agnew and the Disney Sound label plan to introduce the Po-Go’s, a kiddie tribute to the girl band the Go-Go’s.)

“Because parents can now listen to 30 seconds of every recording on earth at iTunes, they get turned on to more music,” he added.

That helps explain why parents — including the 3,000 who monitor the poll of children’s music at the Lovely Mrs. Davis site each week — expect something like an intergenerational custom fit from the music they buy for their offspring. Little Monster’s Ms. Hyman, a flop-haired, youngish 49-year-old, said she recognized a need “to be catered to musically” among fellow parents.

“I wouldn’t feed my daughter McDonald’s every day,” she said. “Why would I want her listening to something of that same standard?”

But taken too far, such catering can raise complicated issues. For one thing, some acts that appeal to both parents and children, like Jack Black ’s Tenacious D, do so more slyly and can present a special challenge. “That’s an incredibly good record,” Mr. Noxon said, but it “spews” profanity on nearly every track.

Hip earnestness is another problem. Many new discs lack the irony-free goofiness that made classics out of the “Sesame Street” song “Rubber Duckie” and Raffi’s “Bananaphone.”

The producers of hipster baby discs seem aware that they may be a mere toddler step away from heavy-handedness. “We’re undergoing a change in what it means to be a traditional parent,” said Mr. Salem. “But I read somewhere that the fastest way to turn your kid into a Republican is to dress him up in a Sex Pistols T-shirt. That’s probably true.”

That last aphorism actually belongs to Mr. Noxon, and its message about musical backfires is probably not lost on the generation of parents who insisted in the 1980s, despite the fierce protestations of their children, that hip-hop was a fad.

Hip-hop, of course, has evolved far beyond the expectations of even the most broad-minded parents of the ’80s. And then some. This month Mathew Knowles, father of Beyoncé, released the CD “Kid’s Rap Radio” (Music World Entertainment), featuring 8-year-olds behind the mike rapping deraunchified hits like Busta Rhymes’s “Touch It.” “Because it’s been such an important part of their lives, parents have a need for their kids to experience hip-hop,” said Mr. Knowles, who explained that he was inspired by his 2-year-old grandson, Jewlz.

Field observations confirm that the new breed of coolness-bestowing parent takes its music seriously. At an all-ages “Baby Loves Jazz” concert at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan in September, the air was thick with grown-up longing. Parents swayed, clapped and whistled, while their 2-year-olds fidgeted with the salt shakers on the tables.

“You could just see that parents are dying to get that awe back, the childlike awe you lose when you start forming opinions about what’s cool,” said John Medeski, of Medeski Martin and Wood, who played keyboards alongside the soul singer Sharon Jones at the show, and whose trio recently recorded a Little Monster disc for release in 2007.

“There’s been a void,” Mr. Medeski added, referring to parents. “The music becomes like medicine.”

If so, the market may be headed for an overdose. The sales gap between the kind of CDs many hip-minded parents consider pablum — the consistently chart-topping “Kidz Bop” series especially — and the indie releases they champion has never been wider. Unless the music gets television exposure or is associated with a brand like Disney, selling more than 20,000 copies is rare.

The wave of music that prompted Amy Davis of Bowling Green, Ohio, to create the Lovely Mrs. Davis site last year has become barely navigable. She and her two sons, ages 6 and 19 months, are drowning in it, she said.

“Next year is going to be really telling,” she said. “We’ll see whether this kind of music takes off and people other than hip urban parents or Net-savvy parents discover it, or if the tide turns and people find something else to get interested in.”

Count Tor Hyams, Kidzapalooza’s 37-year-old co-founder and the father of an infant and a 7-year-old, among the true believers.

“People want to live vicariously through their kids, to rediscover music with them,” he said. “They want to be more than a cog in the cultural wheel, and I salute them for it. If I ever stop being a kid with my kids, you can shoot me.”