Mike, most musicians have significant hearing impairment problems - especially those that were in rock bands. In fact, I don't know a single musician that does not have at least some hearing impairment. Hell, most of the seniors probably hear better than most musicians.

As for an arranger keyboard manufacturer gearing up to target a young audience - I don't believe it's sound business sense. Especially here in the United States. I have a friend that owns one of the local area's largest music stores. It takes up an entire, small shopping center, his inventory is huge, and about a decade ago he decided to pretty much eliminate TOTL arranger keyboards and synths from his store.

Now, here's a guy that walks, talks and breathes music, can play better than 99 percent of the players I know of, and his store offers band rental equipment and he has at least a dozen full and part time music instructors there 6 days a week. Like most stores nationwide, arranger keyboard sales only constitute a tiny percentage of his overall sales. What he sells in guitars in just 15 minutes of every day, he doesn't sell in arranger keyboards and synths in a month. And, these are not low-ball guitars, many costing more than an MOTL arranger keyboard.

In years past, his big money generator was band rental equipment. At the beginning of the school year, the store was jammed to capacity with people waiting in up to 5 lines to pick up rental instruments, guitars, flutes, horns, violins, etc... His repair staff consisted of 4 full-time technicians that could fix anything. I watched one of his techs straighten out a tuba one day that looked as if it had been run over by a truck. At the end of a couple hours you would have thought it was brand new and just came out of the box.

We talked about the future of young people in music at length one day. He and I both agree that young people, high school through the college years, are really not interested in playing music as they were in the past. It's not the equipment - it's the learning curve. They tend to want instant gratification with everything. Many learn a half-dozen guitar chords, pick up some decent chops along the way, and have no trouble getting a job with most of the local rock bands. They're not interested in learning how to read music, learning music theory, chord structure, etc... Those that don't want to play an instrument, which is the majority, want their music for free, loud, and they want it NOW!

I believe Yamaha, Roland, Korg and some lesser known manufacturers have done a lot of market research, they're well aware of who is going to buy their arranger keyboards, pianos, organs, etc... They know how to target those consumers, and they know what they will be likely to purchase, not only this year, but 10 years from now.

About 10 years ago I had a talk with Yamaha about changing their displays to supertwist LCD, which gets brighter as more light hits the face of the screen. The advantage being that those of us that play outdoor jobs, tiki bars, pool parties, anything outdoors, would be able to see the display from any angle. I also talked with them about changing the indicator lights on the buttons to super-bright LEDs for the same reasons. The person I talked with said it would not happen for a number of reasons, cost being right at the top of the list, but most of all the demographics. He said their research showed that less than 1/1000th of 1-percent of their overall consumers would benefit from those changes, which was the approximate percentage of players that plays outdoor jobs regularly.

Cheers,

Gary