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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:53AM
Until recently, that rugged bastion of cutthroat capitalism and pitiless exploitation of the workers, Germany, didn't even have a minimum wage.
Oh, wait, that's not right. They have a robust social welfare system, with comprehensive benefits. They also have a strong industrial economy in which they produce premium products that the rest of the world lines up to buy. They have quite the reputation for reining in large corporations, and a healthy, expansive small enterprise ecosystem, and they built it all ... without minimum wages.
And why did they introduce minimum wages? To save the hapless orphans shivering on the streets?
No, basically as a political sop to pressure groups.
So take your irrelevant nonsense and break it over reality's knee.