Entertainment options today – “Hey, Kid, Wanna buy a Record or a Video game?”

The music business still counts on “the kids.” That phrase has been on the lips of every record executive for at least as long as one music industry expert remembers being in the business: “We’re putting out music, and we’re doing it for the kids.” Thanks, Dad.

“If kids aren’t clamouring for music,” said Russ Crupnick of the market research company NPD Group, “not only do we lose sales to younger consumers, but also parents will be less likely to shop the music section on behalf of their children.”

These days, youthful dollars inspire heavy competition. The number of leisure-time options on which 8- to 25-year-olds can spend their money has risen exponentially since last one music industry expert says he inhabited that demographic. He says; his teens would rather play video games than just listen to music – and the younger aspires to a career as a musician. The boys also spend a lot of time on the internet.

They rarely listen to music when they surf. They load music even more infrequently, although they still do it (and considering who dad is, maybe I just don’t know about the number of songs on their hard drive…), and certainly don’t have much in the way of hard good music CDs that he either got them or they went out and bought. And according to statistics, they’re pretty average in terms of media use – if every teen with internet access only downloads “a few” tracks, that still amounts to a lot of music.

A report by DFC Intelligence claimed that by 2010, the worldwide interactive entertainment market – which includes console video games, games for the personal computer, online games, and portable gaming systems – would equal or eclipse the music business, with gross assets of over $40 billion dollars.

To put that into perspective, the RIAA reported that in 2004, the record business sold a bit over $12 billion dollars worth of goods, a mild upswing of 2.5 percent over 2003. The video game business, meanwhile, had sales of $7.3 billion, a 4 percent rise over the previous year. And while CD sales have risen almost imperceptibly since 1996, video game sales have doubled. It doesn’t take an abacus to figure out that maybe there’s a connection.

Video games are but one of the hellhounds on the record business’s trail. According to a report by the National Association of Record Merchandisers, college students spends more on video and cell phones than they do on music. The average college student purchases but one CD a month. (This might bode worse for the retail business than music or even the record business in general, as some of the money students used to spend on CDs now goes to devices for portable “digital content,” some of which is likely to be music.)

Recent data on younger consumers by several reputable organisations (Kaiser Family Foundation, Forrester Research, Alexander and Associations) revealed a ton of interesting information on the way younger Americans use entertainment media

Television

1. 99 percent of U.S. children between the ages of 2 and 18 lived in homes with televisions.

2. 60 percent had three or more in the home.

3. Over half had a television in their bedroom.

4. Television accounts for more than 40 percent of media exposure for the 8 – 18 age group, over half if you factor in movies and other videos.

Video Gaming

1. 70 percent of U.S. youth between 2 and 18 had video game consoles.

2. 55 percent of boys would rather play games than watch television.

3. Males spend an average of 12 hours a week playing video games.

4. 25 percent of a gamer’s leisure time is spent playing video games.

PCs

1. By 2005, 86 percent of U.S. homes with children between the ages of 8 and 18 had PCs.

2. 74 percent had internet connections.

3. Americans spend an average of three hours a day online.

4. Instant messaging has become the most popular online activity among 8- to 18-year-olds.

5. 87 percent of teens 15 and older, and 83 percent of the broader 12- to 21-year-old age group use IM (as opposed to 32 percent of adults).

6. Over 25 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds said they could not live without their PC, twice as many as those who couldn’t live without their mobile phones.

7. Young people between the ages of 12 and 17 spend an average of between 11 and 20 hours per week online.

8. 8- to 18-year-olds consume about six hours of media daily, unless you count double for the 16 percent of the time they use two media simultaneously. Then it rises to eight hours.

Cellular phones

1. Nearly 50 percent of 12- to 14-year-olds have mobile phones.

2. Active mobile phone users spend 13 hours a week on their phones talking and four hours a week using data services.

3. Young females spend 23.5 hours per week on their mobile phones, more than the 20.9 hours a week they spend watching television.

4. 21 percent of teens downloaded at least 10 ringtones in the three months survey preceding the survey.

5. 60 percent of all people surveyed said they paid for text messaging; 48 percent for custom ringtones; 22 percent for games.

6. 18 percent of active gamers have downloaded a game to their cell phone.