Disturbing Trends in Guitar Sales

[Jim Soloway]

I agree with you Jim, music as an art form still exists and there are good young musicians coming no contest.
The thing is what interests teenagers and young adult is what make them form bands and play music of their heroes and that is what is declining, not the music as an art form. When guitar is less iconic it gets less presence and decline in quantity, not necessarily in quality however.

I guess I don't find that to be especially disturbing. There's just so much great music being made these days including great guitar music. I've been on something of an iTunes binge lately and a lot of what I've been buying has been guitar music and some of it has been just spectacular.

[mrcee]

Considering the HUGE popularity of silly things like guitar hero, and from what I hear from git teachers complaining about dwindling student population I don't think it's odd.

Anyone else wanna weigh in on the issue?

I think that the young players today are maybe more committed than in the past but I agree that in terms of percentage of the demographic less are interested in playing music than 40-50 years ago. When I was a teenager in the 60s everyone was interested in the guitar even if they didn't play.

[Lobomov]

I think that the young players today are maybe more committed than in the past but I agree that in terms of percentage of the demographic less are interested in playing music than 40-50 years ago. When I was a teenager in the 60s everyone was interested in the guitar even if they didn't play.

It was a novelty back then .. The solid body guitar didn't appear until the 50s and then came the guitar went on to amaze the world all starting with buddy holly, the beatles, clapton plugging in a les paul into a marshall on 11. In my opinion it all ended late 80, early 90s.

These days there is nothing amazing, fresh or new to be heard simply in the sound of a guitar. It is just an instrument and can no longer hold the attention of the world on it's own merit. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. It is just that now it has become about what you can do as an artist

[2bornot2bop]

You ever talked to anyone calling themselves "a producer"? They cobble together music from beats and samples while not even knowing how to read music. A lot of these guys see people who can actually play an instrument as a unicorn. When I was a kid, there were bands every few blocks apart. Its just not like that anymore. Of course I have not done any kind of study, I just don't see many young people, not counting YouTube, actually playing instruments anymore.

Closing your eyes to it will not make the problem go away.

But you're referencing the days when you had great music, and groups like Tower Of Power, Chicago, War, on and on and on. We grew up copying and performing all the latest songs from AM radio.

These kids today wouldn't know a "hit" if it hit them on the head!

You know you're getting old when you can't relate to what passes for "music" today.

The last hit I've heard being released, which by the way, I immediately recognized as a hit via a Jeep TV commercial using the soundtrack only before hearing the full vocal version on the radio, was a Michael Jackson song written by he and Paul Anka and posthumously released. The "hit" was actually a 1983 demo track, created a year after the Thriller LP, that for whatever reason must have been considered too soft for record exec's. Show's you what record exec's know.

Thank goodness for "younger musicians"

[Drifter]

These kids today wouldn't know a "hit" if it hit them on the head!

LMAO! Well, you might not know a Techno hit even if it ruptured your eardrum. I may be mistaken though, not trying to belittle your musical knowledge.

Music is evolving, that's a natural process. Guitar music at least has made a very successful transition to the age of electronic music. The questionable musical taste of the masses is no indicator of what is to come, it never has been.

I'd like to note that the world population has more or less doubled since 1970, which means that there are very likely more fans of Jimi Hendrix in the world today than there were back then.

But yeah, this certainly isn't todays average kid's dream anymore.


It's more like:

[ThatRhythmMan]

Sales are only an indicator of a minority of music listening nowadays, but looking at the Billboard end of the year charts I see a lot of guitar based music. Maybe it doesn't dominate the charts, but it's far from gone.

Top Billboard 200 Albums - Year-End 2016 | Billboard

[Hammertone]

I guess if one wants to look at "Disturbing Trends in Guitar Sales" it might help to look at some actual data. Most of the data is available to be purchased from musictrades.com and various other data services. I realize that facts often get in the way of a good narrative, but there's no shortage of information available, sliced and diced between different types of guitars, within various price ranges, within different geographical retail markets, countries of origin, and so forth. Here's a chart just for US guitar market retail sales.

[nopedals]

I can't believe I read this whole thread ;-)

The decline in musicianship goes way back. Musicianship probably peaked in the pre-TV era. Few kids are going to practice three hours a day when there are so many other distractions. Neighborhoods circa 1950 used to have string quartets, and way more kids took piano lessons. We tend to overrate the stuff that came out in the folk and Beatles guitar boom of the mid 60s, but a lot of that was folks playing three cowboy chords. And then with karaoke, mad mothers, and video games, the whole bar scene dried up; the few bands around are playing for the same $200 a night they would have gotten in the 1970s.

Pro musicians 70 years ago were riding buses and playing 300+ shows a year. Big bands cut their records direct to disk; a couple of dozen musicians hitting it in one take without clams. Radio stations used live music. Think of all the sessions a guy like Johnny Smith put in playing live radio, record sessions, and night clubs. Compare the level of musicianship of tracks cut by the wrecking crew and the motown session guys, just about all jazz musicians who grew up without TVs, to the tracks cut by shoe gazers decades later.

The whole thing of guitar collections started in the 90s (it did for me). Before that guys had one or two guitars. Even in the 90s lots of folks were saying it would crash when the boomers retired. The vintage collection run was a 20 year deal that had little to do with musical ability, which was way down by the 90s.

[Longways to Go]

But you're referencing the days when you had great music, and groups like Tower Of Power, Chicago, War, on and on and on. We grew up copying and performing all the latest songs from AM radio.

These kids today wouldn't know a "hit" if it hit them on the head!

You know you're getting old when you can't relate to what passes for "music" today.

The last hit I've heard being released, which by the way, I immediately recognized as a hit via a Jeep TV commercial using the soundtrack only before hearing the full vocal version on the radio, was a Michael Jackson song written by he and Paul Anka and posthumously released. The "hit" was actually a 1983 demo track, created a year after the Thriller LP, that for whatever reason must have been considered too soft for record exec's. Show's you what record exec's know.

Thank goodness for "younger musicians"

Sorry if I'm confused, but I think Katy Perry & Taylor Swift & Adele know a thing or three about writing hits.
Not in a guitarcentric way, but still . . .

[Longways to Go]

I can't believe I read this whole thread ;-)

The decline in musicianship goes way back. Musicianship probably peaked in the pre-TV era. Few kids are going to practice three hours a day when there are so many other distractions. Neighborhoods circa 1950 used to have string quartets, and way more kids took piano lessons. We tend to overrate the stuff that came out in the folk and Beatles guitar boom of the mid 60s, but a lot of that was folks playing three cowboy chords. And then with karaoke, mad mothers, and video games, the whole bar scene dried up; the few bands around are playing for the same $200 a night they would have gotten in the 1970s.

Pro musicians 70 years ago were riding buses and playing 300+ shows a year. Big bands cut their records direct to disk; a couple of dozen musicians hitting it in one take without clams. Radio stations used live music. Think of all the sessions a guy like Johnny Smith put in playing live radio, record sessions, and night clubs. Compare the level of musicianship of tracks cut by the wrecking crew and the motown session guys, just about all jazz musicians who grew up without TVs, to the tracks cut by shoe gazers decades later.

The whole thing of guitar collections started in the 90s (it did for me). Before that guys had one or two guitars. Even in the 90s lots of folks were saying it would crash when the boomers retired. The vintage collection run was a 20 year deal that had little to do with musical ability, which was way down by the 90s.

yeah, think of what Beethoven or Tchaikovsky might have said!

[2bornot2bop]

Sorry if I'm confused, but I think Katy Perry & Taylor Swift & Adele know a thing or three about writing hits.
Not in a guitarcentric way, but still . . .

If you're comparing those hits to the generation of music hits of the 60's, 70's, and early 80's there's no conversation to have. C'mon now

[Herbie]

I have too thought the prices of guitars. I have sold ~5 Gibsons during last years and even 3 of them were solid LP's I felt that finally I had to sell them too cheap to get them moving after weeks and months.

Buyers market – but who the hell would buy if he's not gonna get rid of his axe after a while!?!?!

But I think it is the market, not the guitar. Everybody seems to sell their beloved things, cheap, for different reasons and 'reasons'. Call it feng shui, new sharing economy or whatever, I am just afraid everybody is just making room to cheap electronical junk from Far East.

Guitar stores are not filled with youngsters but it does not mean that youngsters would not play, it's because youngsters buy everything from the internet!

I understand everyone's point of view but the "no international sales" in any For Sale -ad makes me feel like Americans think us Europeans as criminals. It is very irritating because US markets are so big and well organised. We in EU don't have common marketplaces for used music instruments such as Ebay, Jazzguitar.be, The Gear Page etc. Every country has their own in their own little communities in their own languages, which makes buying and selling more complicated.

But luckily the current relation of US dollar/EU euro is so sad that it kills the interest in international sales anyway!

[rlrhett]

I guess if one wants to look at "Disturbing Trends in Guitar Sales" it might help to look at some actual data. Most of the data is available to be purchased from musictrades.com and various other data services. I realize that facts often get in the way of a good narrative, but there's no shortage of information available, sliced and diced between different types of guitars, within various price ranges, and so forth. Here's a chart just for US guitar market retail sales.

Thank you. I had seen that chart and was trying to remember where. Yes, that is over a BILLION dollars in guitar sales last year. I don't think youngsters have stopped buying guitars in the USA. There is another chart I can't access now that breaks it down by price. The lion's share of guitars are sold in the $200-$400 range. Thats a lot of guitars for a Billion dollars!

The only conclusion I can reach is that the low price of guitars has more to do with market manipulation by China, not a global declining interest in guitars.

[lammie200]

Sorry if I'm confused, but I think Katy Perry & Taylor Swift & Adele know a thing or three about writing hits.
Not in a guitarcentric way, but still . . .

I think the fact that most of the popular music produced in the last 15-20 years (whether hits or not) is not guitarcentric is probably what bothers a lot of guitarists. At the risk of speaking for others I think that it is because we love the guitar. We love guitar rhythm tracks, we love guitar hooks, we love guitar solos. We love guitars and all they entail. It was very moving to hear a song built around a guitar as the main rhythmic and melodic instrument, and as the compositional force behind it. The song that couldn't exist without the guitar somehow. In my ears guitars are used in very unmeaningful ways in most of what I hear today. They are either small specs in the spacings of a song, or the song itself has no spacings within it to allow anything to come through.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You know what's odd? I've noticed recently on eBay that there is occasionally one guitar for sale (the one I'm thinking of was an Ibanez GB-30) from Japan, but there were 4 or 5 different auctions up for it. Maybe 80% of the pictures in all the auctions are the same, with maybe one or two different poses in each. Often, the serial number is shown in a few of the auctions, so you know its the same guitar. Prices for the one I saw recently went from about 1700 to 2500. Literally the same guitar! Has anyone else noticed that? I understand this may be an old thing but it caught me by surprise.

Don't bid on any of them ... that's often a clue to a scam.

[Lobomov]

This one been shared a lot lately, so you may have seen it ... but hey, it deserves a place in this thread

[Thumpalumpacus]

The owner of my local guitar shop, where I've been going for 20 years, says nearly all his customers are people in their late 40s-50s

Go to any guitar forum -- here, MLP, TDPRI, Strat-Talk -- outside of UGh, and I'll bet dollars against your doughnuts that the average age is well north of thirty-five or perhaps even forty. The last stand of guitar music in popular culture was grunge in the 90s, and dare I say it, the torch is being carried by insipid modern country.

There are good young musicians, good young guitarists, out there -- but they'll go broke if we don't support them. Go to your local shows, give lessons, and so on.

A few years back, still living in SoCal, I would host a monthly acoustic jam in my backyard -- barbecue, beer, bring your gal and kids if you got 'em, and no skill requirements: everyone got a turn. I had, at the time, 30 years on the instrument, and the newest guitarist there had six months or so but was writing songs -- and no matter who was up on deck, the other four or five of us had to fall in and play, or sit out. Those barbecues were for me a way of paying back by paying forward, because lord knows I've had so much help from so many.

I worry that guitar will fall the way of the clarinet; I worry that rock is, like jazz before it, entering its senescence, to be loved and learnt by only a few disciples, and ignored -- or worse, scorned -- by others. But I reckon if I can inspire someone to pick up a six-string and give it a shot, I've done a little bit to fight that.

[GNAPPI]

I guess if one wants to look at "Disturbing Trends in Guitar Sales" it might help to look at some actual data.

[/FONT]

The low end from Fender, Epi, Ibanez are lumped in those numbers. I do see the point but looking at my OP :

What is disturbing is seeing a very fairly priced git not sell or, worse still get relisted with a price drop or OBO, and still go unsold. Clearly it's a buyer market.

"Are there just more gits out there in a saturated market than buying players, is this a barometer of the economy, or are players expecting spectacular or unreasonably low priced deals?"

I've seen L4's sell for VERY low prices, worse still not sell at all.

HT, while the conversation drifted to nether regions the "Disturbing" point is valid regardless how many $100 Indonesian Squires are sold every year.

[zdub]

(snip)
These days there is nothing amazing, fresh or new to be heard simply in the sound of a guitar. It is just an instrument and can no longer hold the attention of the world on it's own merit. This doesn't have to be a bad thing. It is just that now it has become about what you can do as an artist

Watch some of the brilliant Candyrat artists and say that again...

[GNAPPI]

Jeez, some peeps just want to argue.

[iim7V7IM7]

These are the global 2015 numbers...Making inferences about the entire market based on a fraction of the upper tail (e.g. Most archtops) is not reflective of the main market. >95% of the market is <$1,500 (new!) and the distribution is right skewed. The archtop market is tiny, tiny, tiny and is likely smaller today than it was a decade ago.

[Jim Soloway]

Watch some of the brilliant Candyrat artists and say that again...

[lammie200]

...Are there just more gits out there in a saturated market than buying players, is this a barometer of the economy, or are players expecting spectacular or unreasonably low priced deals?

...while the conversation drifted to nether regions the "Disturbing" point is valid...

I am not sure if this drifts away from potential reasoning, but I watched the CNN documentary about the band Chicago last night. It was pretty much presented in chronological order, and while I thought that I couldn't stomach it past the point that Terry Kath died, I watched the whole thing. I found one of the most interesting parts to be when the remaining founding members kicked the original drummer, Danny Seraphine, out of the band in 1990. They said that he was distracted and not concentrating on his drumming anymore. It seems like some of the things that distracted him were the evolving technologies in drumming, mixing, recording, etc. I think that he thought that he needed to adapt to the emerging technologies or he wouldn't have been evolving as a musician. His drumming suffered though.

I can relate. I am not a professional musician, but I have experienced a similar effect in my day job. I am an architect and I have seen many architects lose their careers based on not being able to keep up with emerging technologies. The software that we use to deliver documents has been continuously changing since we started using it in the mid 80's. The software industry has essentially continuously made many people outdated because they cannot adapt to its usage. It is unfortunate. I am not a Luddite, but the software industry has let us down because it hasn't understood how transitional thinking in our profession works. Not by a longshot.

Relating this to trends in the demand for guitars and the trends in music today (at least how it relates to popular music) I think that technology may be removing the guitar from the equation simply because, at it's base level, the guitar is a relatively crude way to play and compose music by today's standards. Couple that with all the other things about technology that have captured people's lives and everything gets boiled down to a series of on/off switches. I would bet that if you put kids in a room today and gave them both a guitar and a midi programmable keyboard and asked them which one they preferred to keep more often than not they would say the keyboard. After all the keys resemble those simple on/off switches.

[Lobomov]

Watch some of the brilliant Candyrat artists and say that again...

I'll gladly say that again

I think you missed my point. What I saw when I quickly browsed thru their youtube channel (and in the vid Soloway linked to) was a lot of players doing amazing musical things, but most of them just bang on acoustic guitars and there is nothing new sonically to capture the imagination of the masses. More plausible is that it may be dismissed by the famous 'Too many notes' comment

On the other hand something like this which is simplicity mesmerized once based on sound and life style.

[zdub]

I'll gladly say that again

I think you missed my point. What I saw when I quickly browsed thru their youtube channel (and in the vid Soloway linked to) was a lot of players doing amazing musical things, but most of them just bang on acoustic guitars and there is nothing new sonically to capture the imagination of the masses. More plausible is that it may be dismissed by the famous 'Too many notes' comment

On the other hand something like this which is simplicity mesmerized once based on sound and life style.

(video snipped)

Well when you're talking "capturing the imagination of the masses", you're not generally talking about stylings of music that folks that frequent this forum mostly listen to. But specifically in terms of guitar we'll have to disagree on this. I think the new wave of acoustic guitarists coming out of the Hedges tradition are inspiring and creating sonically interesting compositions. Folks like Antoine Dufour or Ewan Dobson. Or Ian Ethan Case (video previously) who incorporates many different styles including blindingly fast and complex passages reminiscent of Metheny.

Yeah, lots of banging and thumping these days, often overdone. But a lot of it is simply brilliant.