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Don't Give Up on the Guitar. Fender is Begging You

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:17PM

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @03:17PM (#431854) Journal

    I still have my guitar in my room, but I never play it anymore. I've forgotten pretty much everything, which isn't to say I was ever any good anyway. I bought the thing used and on sale pretty cheap, and it's a decent instrument as far as my untrained eyes and tonedeaf ears can tell. It's a Schecter, though, so sorry, Fender. I'm sure the Stratocaster is a pretty good instrument as well. Used to use JACK as my effects box and had fairly decent desktop speakers.

    That “playstation” controller (XBox, Playstation, Wii, who cares, they're all “playstation”) was what motivated me to give it a try. I even changed my Rock Band character's instrument to roughly match the color and finish.

    Sort of lost access to cannabis and never really found a way to get it again, and the world turned gray as it had been before. Not even sepia-tone! Just gray.

    Almost completely forgot that the guitar in my room ever did anything other than collect dust. The things I used to be able to do.