Peddling the Oldies
Older popsters are thinking outside the box to get their music to the masses. Starbucks is hawking Paul McCartney's new CD, Memory Almost Full. And Walgreens was the exclusive purveyor for Tony Bennett's CD/DVD set Duets. It's all part of a trend of more boomer music being sold in nontraditional settings.
"I think for some time the sentiment has been that adults don't like to go to music stores," says Geoff Mayfield, a Billboard senior analyst. Stores that play ear-splitting youth music are partly to blame, he says.
But despite not spending as much time in music stores, consumers 45 and older bought 26 percent of music sold in 2006, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The 15-to-19 age bracket was next, at 13 percent.
A Hairless Tale
Susan Parsley, 66, loves to draw. Her daughter, Morie Pierce Smile, 44, loves to write. When a friend—a young mother—was diagnosed with cancer, Smile and Parsley created "Look Inside," a free 14-page booklet for children who've seen a loved one lose hair to chemotherapy treatments.
Parsley, a Lynchburg, Va., resident and former licensing specialist for social services, was thrilled to work on the intergenerational project with her daughter, who lives in Golden, Colo., and is an AARP associate state director. More than 125,000 copies of "Look Inside," which can be personalized, have been printed in English and Spanish. Click here to download an English copy of their book.
Grandmothers Rule!
Cops don't necessarily strike fear in gang members' hearts, but grandmothers do. So says a clergyman in Salinas, Calif., who regularly ministers to jail inmates. That prompted Mayor Dennis Donohue to create a "granny brigade" to fight gang violence in his city of 150,000.
"We're a working-class community with a lot of single parents," says Donohue. "The reality a lot of time is that grandmothers run the home." Donohue recently met with 30 Salinas grandmothers, asking them to visit area juvenile detention facilities—and to help ensure that all first-graders obtain library cards.
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