The older music buyer seems in a resurgence with the success of more adult appeal acts and the only guaranteed mass appeal hit we've heard in ages being Busy Being Fabulous from The elderly Eagles.

Scarcely a young/rock act in sight apart from Amy.

Does this mean younger music fans, if they still exist, only want free P2P music whilst the older ones, with a lot of spare cash and the older morality, are buying CD's?

Or that people don't know how to sell, let alone promote or market, younger acts any more?

This subject could do with a proper survey really, but all I can do when I guage things personally is look at what I see and that is, that the younger people seem to really like the older acts.
Its predominately the middle aged people that are still stuck with a "rock dinaosaur" ethic etc, and seem embarrased by them.
This "younger generation" have possibly the highest number of acts between them, amateur and "name" of any I have seen, therefore, the theory could be seen as they don`t like "competition" and seek out older and untouchable heroes.

And there is another answer - perhaps music really was better then.

I know several young people who cannot believe how good Led Zep is.

In short: Probably both.

The singles market,are oldies like myself really pumping our cash into it?
Now perhaps it's got to do with how the charts are calculated?
MTV plays are a strong feature on calculating hits,and perhaps they push extra plays for oldie bands,to try and get the CD/downloading oldies like myself aware that bands we knew before are making new stuff?
Just an idea,because for many years singles were just a way of promoting LPs,and middle aged people do like you said have a good record of parting with cash,rather than going to P2P.

Led Zep was actually the case in point I was going to make. We were at quite a young bash last night and they are the "buzz band".
Also, very well marketed currently, kids are not buying "Mothership" for their parents, it`s for themselves.

A lot of kids I know are really into the Beatles.

I tried to convince several quite prominent industry people about the older market five years ago. And got laughed at.