Youth and the popular music business

The predominant consumers, analysts, commentators and producers of popular music are children and young people. The significance of music for children and young people is well known. A business perspective on the music industry is considerably less well documented. This paper examines ten key issues for the popular music business to consider in their dealings with children and young people. The same ten issues are just as vital to policy makers, parents, educators and the young people themselves. Those issues are: the proportion of young people's time and money that is spent on popular music consumption; their ease of access to popular music; the positive and negative impacts on health; the positive and negative impacts on attitudes and behaviour; piracy and respect for copyright and other intellectual property rights; their participation as prospective industry employees, artists and entrepreneurs; peer groups and the tribal nature of youth and popular music; age compression, especially with regard to younger children; popular music as an entertainment common denominator in education and advertising; and the marketing of popular music to young people.