The record-buying market is 11-14 year old teen girls. That's why Bieber is popular. The problem is that the recording industry has wrapped its entire future around this particular demographic to the near exclusion of anything strictly for monetary reasons. Every time I see some band that's popular among a young female demographic, it's some damned pretty boy band who have nothing going for them except the look. What the hell do we teach girls in this country? Clearly, they are not taught to appreciate music. Their fandom is purely visually based.

And it's that way in all genres now. Country music has for years been a mere visually based medium--every guy a hunk and every gal a doll. It ceased long ago to be anything a person with taste could possibly appreciate. In both jazz and classical, the trend has been to go younger and younger and younger due to this unbelievable over-emphasis of youth this country can't seem to get enough of. The result is that classical musicians burn out at 22 these days. You almost never see a violinist who started recording at 10 still recording at 42. They have burned out long before they reach that age.

In jazz, younger and younger musicians are being pressured into being bandleaders but lack the cred and the music betrays it. They lead bands when they should be learning from a more experienced leader. Esperanza Spalding is an exception. They made her a bandleader at a young age and she's a beautiful young woman (i.e. the right look) but she is also so talented and so well educated in music that she met the challenge but that isn't going to happen the vast majority of the time. So with each passing generation, the music degenerates because the newer generation listens to the older one that started when it was too young to know what it was doing.