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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.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:58PM
Reduced attention span in young people
You think my generation's attention spans were any better when we were young?
which have reached an amazing value/price ratio
Indeed, my no-name Korean guitar I bought two decades ago sounds great and has really good action. OTOH the Japanese one I had when I was 13 was really crappy. Things have changed.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday November 24 2016, @12:01AM
You think my generation's attention spans were any better when we were young?
Absolutely, due to the influence of ever condensed media. More aggressively cut video and film, shorter and more superficial radio reports and last, but not least as (unintended) consequence of putting a very character limited means of communication into the signaling of GSM. Which then begat twitter and its ilk.
OTOH the Japanese one I had when I was 13 was really crappy. Things have changed.
My first electric was Japanese, too, but a good instrument which I still own. An Ibanez Blazer, which my parents then bought for me at around 600 Deutschmarks, used, from a friend. That was totally the limit of what could be afforded (for a young guy's guitar). Corrected by inflation, this probably would be around 1200 USD/EUR today. A Fender back then must've been at least twice that. Last year, for the sole reason of curiosity about Chinese quality improvements, I bought a retail house brand ("J&D") guitar. Explorer/Star style, double humbuckers, sort-of-metallic paint, for the measly price of 77 EUR, new. It does have a few slightly rough edges, but overall it's totally good enough.
So if they write "The $6 billion U.S. retail market for musical instruments has been stagnant", it's no surprise. Nothing in there says they sold less guitars. They might even have sold more - just much cheaper ones. Same for keyboards, btw. The DX-7, when new, cost 4000 Marks. Now you just run Hexter as one of many plugins on your laptop, which might have cost a tenth of that - including some master keyboard.