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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the while-my-guitar-gently-weeps dept.

Each holiday season, thousands of teenagers tear gift wrap off shiny, new guitars. They giddily pluck at the detuned strings, thinking how cool they'll be once they're rock stars—even if almost all will give up before they ever get to jam out to "Sweet Child o' Mine."

For them, it's no big deal to relegate the guitar to the back of the closet forever in favor of the Playstation controller. But it is a big deal for Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the 70-year-old maker of rock 'n' roll's most iconic electric guitars. Every quitter hurts.

[...]The $6 billion U.S. retail market for musical instruments has been stagnant for five years, according to data compiled by research firm IBISWorld, and would-be guitar buyers have more to distract them than ever. So how do you convince someone to put down the iPhone, pick up a Stratocaster, and keep playing?

Seems Fender didn't get the memo: the music of the future is hip-hop and autotuners.


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  • (Score: 2) by rcamera on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:59PM

    by rcamera (2360) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @02:59PM (#431844) Homepage Journal

    I was very excited when I learned that my office was moving to 48th street in Manhattan (in the old "music district"). I had bought my lovely Fender bass just a year or two earlier at Rudy's on the same block as the new office, and was looking forward to sneaking off once in a while to play with their toys during lunch. I was very interested in the T-Bucket acoustic model, and had played around with one at Rudy's, and even made an offer to purchase for 90% of retail (which they refused). So, the week before my office move, I happen to walk down 48th - only to find that the shop had been replaced with a t-shirt/souvenir shop.

    In the past 5 years, the "music district" has lost every single shop (except for an accordion shop). Sam Ash moved to 34th st in 2012, Colony Records closed about 2 years ago (was Build-a-Bear last time I walked by), Rudy's is gone since 2015. There is literally no music district in NYC anymore.

    I've done my share of keeping Fender in business in the past 5 years - between guitar and bass amps (Rumble, Bronco, Mustang), a few (Squire) strats, (Squire) P-Bass, American J-Bass, CB series acoustic Bass, etc.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:13PM (#432020)

    Guitar Center in the 'burbs probably had a hand in driving many mom and pop music stores out of business. Meanwhile, the market for acoustic pianos keeps declining, although maybe well-to-do Chinese immigrants shopping for their kids could prop it up for awhile.