VERY Interesting article on the Guitar's Demise.....

[gustophersmob]

Seems to me like musical instrument trends have waxed and waned from time immemorial. Even since the turn of the last century we've seen the rise and fall into (relative) obscurity of the mandolin, banjo, ukulele, accordion and probably others. Heck, mandolin and banjo orchestras were a Big Thing. Reaching the mandolin orchestra (and appealing to them with their new designs) is what really launched Gibson as a company with staying power.

I think the guitar has been somewhat unusual in its staying power as a prime driver of "pop" music. Will it ever die? Unlikely. Will it reach the heights of the 60's and 70's? Again, IMO, highly unlikely.

I'm just waiting until they're dumping '59 cherry burst les pauls on the vintage market for only a few $k Either way, music will always be here to stay, its part of what makes us human.

 

[nostatic]

Best words to describe the situation. Instead of guitars kids are reaching for their phones constantly. Wanna see if their friends just had a burger or a beer.

Not just kids. Yesterday I forgot my phone at home, went to lunch and just sat waiting for my food, listening to the background music and people watching. Everyone of every age was buried in their phone.

I've given talks recently about our new mixed realities and am asked what I think is coming. My three growth industries for the next decade or two:

1. digital forensics - trying to understand what constitutes veracity in a post-evidence world
2. personal counter surveillance - at some point people will catch on to how much of their lives they are giving away and decide that data has more value than companies are providing.
3. unplugging - the singularity is BS (Kurzweil is wrong imho), and some will reach a point where they will want/need to reconnect with nature.

There is a whole other set of waves of redefining self in digital worlds. For those who are gluttons for punishment: Link Removed

 

[bassestkkm]

The "slow demise" of the guitar industry has many causes. For one, a failure of innovation to incorporate guitars with the more "modern" genres of music has been a failure to take advantage of an unexplored section of industry. Two, the social action of going out and seeing new bands and spending time in the public is no longer a common thing so exposure is generally through media only. Three is a social observation, though it's not all encompassing. But, while we are out of a recession and generally improving, I don't see nearly as many people spending time in themselves or doing things they always wanted to do. The lack of people pursuing self discipline and personal growth seems to be lacking. Four, my generation seems to lack the patience to get to a point of true proficiency and the generation before me seem to lack the patience to allow my generation to find its way in the strange new market of jobs etc. That one is not as big an issue to me.

Is GC in debt because of a sales decline, or because of a wrong strategy and/or having been taken over by corporate raiders? A favorite strategy is to split the retail and real estate holdings, then make the retail arm rent from the real estate holdings. Then you borrow against the retail holdings and pay yourself hefty bonuses. Voila, you have a company that's heavily in debt.

It's a combination of things. They acquired too many companies without upping the quality of their online experience. In the days of amazon eBay reverb and sweetwater they have failed to deliver a similar experience and rely in their stores alone.
They're working on it, but it would be interesting to see the direction it takes in the next many years.

I have lived in Portland, played music in Portland and remain a fan of the town. But I think it is definitely an outlier in terms of its continued enthusiasm for rock clubs, rock music and the "rock dream." For that matter, Portland is resting on its laurels in terms of bands that have managed to transcend the scene and go national or international. Stumptown's biggest bands, such as Pink Martini, Decemberists or Dandy Warhols, all happened one or two decades ago.

I have to agree with you here

 

[Love_Bass]

What amazes me is that so many legend guitarists are still alive..Someone should write up a article on that..

 

[Son of Wobble]

What amazes me is that so many legend guitarists are still alive..Someone should write up a article on that..

Presumably all that finger-wigglin' is good for the lymphatic system?...

 

[Gully Foyle]

Couple other observations -

1. I note no mention of Mr. Hall and his company. While I am generally not a fan of his, he has steered the ship effectively.
2. Being that this is in the WaPo, I assume its the start of some new Bezos skulduggery in the instrument industry.

 

[guy n. cognito]

As soon as I opened the article and saw "George G" complaining, I understood where the article came from. With a zillion good and great instruments to choose from, a LOT of folks are no longer spending what a small home costs on an old guitar or bass George has for sale at a large mark-up over what he paid for it.

Semper Gumby(Always Flexible), ability to change = survival and sometimes happiness.

Gruhns seems to revel in making sure that vintage instruments are unaffordable for anyone except wealthy collectors.

He's had a six string Roscoe hanging in his shop for 10 years. Until recently, it was priced about 1,000 higher than retail value. For about 6 years, I made an annual offer on that bass for fair value...only to be told that the price was firm. He's finally dropped it to something reasonable. Only took him a decade.

No, young guitarists can't afford the inflated prices that Gruhn has forced on the market. No surprise there.

 

[Alex Huddleston]

I have lived in Portland, played music in Portland and remain a fan of the town. But I think it is definitely an outlier in terms of its continued enthusiasm for rock clubs, rock music and the "rock dream." For that matter, Portland is resting on its laurels in terms of bands that have managed to transcend the scene and go national or international. Stumptown's biggest bands, such as Pink Martini, Decemberists or Dandy Warhols, all happened one or two decades ago.

Very true. Most people here are hugely supportive of local bands and even smaller bands on tour coming through town, but very few bands from here have actually broken out of the local scene and have much national or international success. It's still very awesome to be able to go to a dive bar almost any night of the week and see some unknown band play to a sizable crowd, though.

 

[Rib 13]

this picture made me vomit in my mouth a little bit

 

[Son of Wobble]

Couple other observations -

1. I note no mention of Mr. Hall and his company. While I am generally not a fan of his, he has steered the ship effectively.

True enough, Hall has effectively refrained from over-leveraging his company.

 

[Mike Sorr]

This doesn't surprise me. I don't know any kids that play guitar, or any instrument for that matter, seriously. I was in a Sam Ash store recently and was surprised that there were as many instruments hanging from there wall as there were. "Who buys these anymore", I wondered. I hate to sound like an old fart as I'm sure my grandparents said the same thing about my parent's generation...but I shudder to think that one day millennials will run the planet. But eventually they will, and the music will suck.

 

[Mildew Jones]

My son is a drummer started on (guitar), he currently plays in 2 thrash metal bands. Both bands have dual guitar players, all 4 of these guys have monster chops, early to mids 20's.
It warms my cockles to see youth continuing with our archaic sound creation methods, instead of jumping on the computer generated sound/EDM DJ bandwagon.
We've all heard the death of guitar based/rock music is imminent, but I'm not really seeing it, yet.
I HAVE noticed the lack of bass gear in the latest round on mailers I've been getting ( I know someone posted recently about that), guitars, drums, keys, recording equipment listed, no low end support. Interesting.
Rock on \m/
MJ

 

[Alex Huddleston]

Best words to describe the situation. Instead of guitars kids are reaching for their phones constantly. Wanna see if their friends just had a burger or a beer. And real guitars? Too much work to learn how to play! Those who are learning to play are buying acoustic and trying to emulate the latest garbage the industry is spitting out-- ballads with acoustic strummers. The industry made every attempt after 2000 to kill the guitar gods scene and have succeeded quite nicely.

Play a guitar? Sure-- with Guitar Hero!

When I was a kid -- before MTV-- we had a band, and the only place to socialize, party, dance was the weekly dances we put on in our small town. Everyone met, caught up on news, and visited. How nice! Even danced! And I can't remember how many times we had people from the audience step up and sit in on a song. Seems like everyone played back then.

Today is about electronic music and DJ's. No wonder the band scene is dying. Rant over.

I have to disagree with the Guitar Hero part... I personally would not be playing, recording, touring etc. if Guitar Hero hadn't struck my interest when I picked it up 10 years ago and I feel like it's the same story for many my age.

 

[avvie]

And at Sweetwater.com, the online retailer, a brand-new, interest-free Fender can be had for as little as $8 a month.")

Really?...where? The Squiers are $17/month.
Maybe the problem is that false value has been applied to these instruments. New ones are in the 4 digits and old ones are considered more valuable. Dunno about Gibson's crap, but Fender's guitars were designed to be low cost and inexpensive to appeal to a broad market; this idea that they are somehow magical enough to be overpriced in both old and new markets leadsnto an industry getting what it deserves.

 

[itsalljustaride]

I haven't read all the comments yet, but when I got to this part:

“John Mayer?” he asks. “You don’t see a bunch of kids emulating John Mayer and listening to him and wanting to pick up a guitar because of him.”

I knew this was an ill-informed piece. PLENTY of John-Mayer-Wannabes picked up a guitar after "Your Body Is A Wonderland" gifted them with the notion that playing an acoustic with a highly-affected, smoky-toned vocal performance could net you some ladies.

Gruhn might sell more guitars if he lowered his exorbitant prices. I went to his shop this past Winter. It's pretty, but no way I'd buy anything from them with their prices.

Never mind that there ARE still "guitar heroes" for those who are interested. Tosin Abasi and others like him are the new Clapton. Gruhn needs to update his pop culture references. Just because people aren't coming into his overpriced shop playing Clapton licks anymore doesn't mean people aren't buying guitars because of a lack of superstars to emulate.

 

[Mildew Jones]

I have to disagree with the Guitar Hero part... I personally would not be playing, recording, touring etc. if Guitar Hero hadn't struck my interest when I picked it up 10 years ago and I feel like it's the same story for many my age.

My son was very into that game, I'm sure that played a good part in him getting interested in guitar, and eventually drums. He heard guitar based hard rock his whole life to that point from parents, he stuck with it stylistically.
I will say that Rockband is a viable training device to become a drummer, the pads laid out like a regular kit. My son killed on that game for a while, then asked to switch to drums. We got him a cheap starter kit, he could play well from the minute he hit the skins...I was very impressed. He is a real natural with music stuff, played guitar pretty good (just rhythm stuff), his time and ear are flawless. Proud Papa, indeed.
MJ

 

[Holdsg]

The biggest driver for the M&I industry is discretionary income, which essentially is a "economy up, business is good" thing. Recessions hit M&I harder than anything. Still digging out from 2008-9. That is cyclical, and I would attribute it as the primary factor behind the decline in unit sales (interesting, though, is that the lastest quarterly sales figures from MusicTrades, electric guitars by units grew 35% YOY in 4th quarter 2016, but unit sales were down 1.8% for full-year 2016, still digging out of the trench).
Demographics (aging boomers, indifferent millennials) is a harder thing for me to get my head around, as far as a driver for the decline. As millennials start to move into their prime income generating years, it will be interesting to see which industries benefit, and which don't. Who knew, for example, that vinyl record sales would have such an amazing comeback?

 

[itsalljustaride]

Hang on. Aren't sales of anything that isn't "necessities" dropping because wages haven't matched inflation?

Shh, that sounds like some kind of logical economic argument based on data instead of feelings and old grumpy-dude nostalgia. This here's the inner-net, and we don't take kindly to logical arguments about complex systems with multiple variables interacting in dynamic ways.

 

[peledog]

Dead?

Perhaps factor in the cuts to music education and classes at local and state levels by 'fiscally responsible' parties. Certainly a contributing factor.

 

[basslayer]

the whole industry is run by venture capitalist who are more interested in inspiring collectors like themselves rather than creating new customers. as such, this aspect of the music industry has had a default popularity for so long that it wouldn't recognize "cool" in a freezer, next to an air conditioner in January in Alaska.