While losing their appeal among young consumers in China, karaoke parlors are becoming more popular with middle-aged and elderly people, Worker's Daily reported.

A customer selects a song in a karaoke booth in a shopping mall in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, on January 10, 2018 (Photo/Xinhnua)

Li Jingwen, born after 1995, said she went to play room escape games with her friends instead of having a KTV party during the Spring Festival holiday. Similarly, Chen Ye, 31-year-old resident of Beijing, said that KTV no longer holds the attraction that it used to for him, as he now has more options for recreation.

In 2019, 4,609 KTV clubs in China were deregistered or had their certificates revoked, according to data from Qichacha, a platform providing data and analytics on China-based private and public companies.

The decline of KTV parlors is partly attributable to the rise of new KTV services, including sing-along apps on smartphones, which allow people to sing anytime anywhere, and mini KTV bars, which have a sound-proofed private space of less than two square meters and can be found in many shopping malls.

While the passion among the young for karaoke is waning, more middle-aged and elderly people are now patronizing KTV clubs. According to statistics jointly released by Koubei, Alibaba's platform for local life services, and Eleme, a takeaway-ordering platform, in 2019, the number of consumers aged above 50 who went to karaoke parlors in the afternoon was 20 percent higher than that of young consumers.

This may be down to the fact that the older demographic also love singing, and carry out most of their recreational activities during the day, according to Mr. Zhao, an operations officer of a KTV club in Huilongguan, Changping district in Beijing.

63-year-old Zhang Baogang said that it cost him just over 100 yuan (about $15.5) to sing and chat with friends in a karaoke room for the whole afternoon, which he enjoyed much more than spending time in a park.

A woman surnamed Jiang explained that she went to karaoke clubs to make new friends and renew her friendship with her old friends, and didn't care much about whether she could sing well or not.

To attract more middle-aged and elderly consumers, some KTV parlors have added more old songs favored by middle-aged and senior people to their collections, and offered discounts and sales promotions.