Q Are pop fans getting younger

A. If you check the facts, the answer is no, they are not getting younger.�The thrust of the marketing machine is aimed at younger music fans, because that is increasingly where the money, and hopefully a long-term financial relationship, is to be found.

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Q. Can you explain

A. Let's get back track to the beginning of pop music as we know it - the early 1960s. The notion of actually 'selling' pop stars started with The Beatles, no surprise there, but it's the actual audience that music is aimed at that has altered over the years. With a band like The Beatles, it was simple�- nice clean cut young boys, smart suits, hair a bit long, but it was always clean, and the whole thing was all aimed fairly and squarely at girls entering their teens. If boys wanted music, there was The Rolling Stones, a suitably aggressive dirty yobbish bunch of hooligans, unwashed, noisy, and guaranteed to upset the parents of youths with newly discovered spending power. Girl pop stars were people such as Cilla Black and Lulu, even more wholesome than The Beatles, you couldn't exactly be a rebel by fancying people like Helen Shapiro.

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Q. But that was all about creating an 'image' wasn't it

A. Exactly.�That is entirely the point. History has shown that The Stones were actually nice middle class young men who happened to enjoy blues music, and The Beatles were the rough young chancers getting up to allsorts in Hamburg, the point is, the image that was projected has formed the basis for marketing pop bands from then to now.

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Q. So pop for teenagers was always wholesome

A. In the majority of cases that's true. Groups�such as Herman's Hermits and Freddie And The Dreamers were nice young men in suits. Remember we are talking a different generation here, things moved on a bit by the 1970s

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Q. Not so wholesome by then

A. A little less so. It was considered o.k. to have a crush on an Osmond, and to think that Michael Jackson was kinda cute when he shook his hips, that kind of idea. In those days, pop was still tied up to puberty, and aimed at girls, because they bought records, and more importantly, all the merchandising spin-offs that went with them�- magazines, posters, pillow-cases, key-rings and so on.

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Q. Where did the pre-teen market arrive from then

A. It didn't so much arrive, as evolve, mainly in America. Remember a singer called Tiffany Started off singing in shopping malls (and you can't get much more American than that) and created a style as an 'empowered' teenager Suddenly pre-teen girls had a role model, unthreatening, independent, a sort of big-sister-you'd-like-to-swap-your-real-big-sister-for type of pop star, and the marketing men were quick to see the potential.

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Q. So that's where the Christina's and Britney's came from �

A. Well no, because there has been a subtle shift, and a blurring of the lines that separate wholesome teen pop from a more adult area. Today's Monkees and Hermits are bands like Boyzone and N'Sync, utterly safe and sanitised, all teeth and hair gel, no problem for teenage girls, and their pre-teen sisters to put on their bedroom walls. The shift in emphasis has been the advent of Girl Power�- created by The Spice Girls, and moved on by the image of Britney Spears to capture a new element in the market.

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Q. What new element is that

A. Boys�- of all ages. When Britney pouts in her school uniform, she isn't creating a visual style that girls want to look at, but one that boys are keen on, and if boys like Britney, and girls think she's empowering, and she's cute enough to be the older-sister model, you have any artist who has sewn up just about every marketing angle there is, and in the final analysis, that's what it's all about. Get them young, as young as possible, and keep them through their early teens, that's a potential ten years of spending power, enough to make any executive see � signs, lots of them.

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Q. So is the children's market the next place for pop to go then

A. No, it's already been there.�Check out Pinky and Perky, and The Chipmunks, both kids' icons�from the 50s and 60s. from TV and radio respectively. So, there really isn't anything new in the world of pop, the marketing may change, the audience, from tots to twenties, remains very much the same.

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