Sonic Boom: A Burgeoning Guitar Market in the COVID-19 Era.
With the extra time COVID-19 has brought to those who can afford it, people have begun to pick up new hobbies—the guitar, being one of the most salient choices. How will this boom in guitar sales affect the music industry in the future? How does this parallel the economic reactions to the Boomer effect of the Baby Boomer generation?
Source: Times of India
For those able to afford it, the inception of the COVID-19 lockdowns has cut out long commute times from many busy schedules, freeing up extra hours to pick up a new hobby. With an upward surge in guitar sales, it seems as though many are turning to the 6-stringed instrument during their time stuck at home. While many in-person operations have shut down, guitar providers/brands have seen an even larger increase in online sales: Andy Mooney, the founder of the legacy brand Fender, told writers at the New York Times, “‘We’ve broken so many records...It will be the biggest year of sales volume in Fender history, record days of double-digit growth, e-commerce sales and beginner gear sales. I never would have thought we would be where we are today if you asked me back in March.'" Along with the "hardware" of Fender guitars, their online learning platform, Fender Play, has also witnessed extraordinary growth: In March, with a considerable 150,000 users; in June, months later, numbers exploded to 930,000 users. Guitar Center, another company offering online guitar instruction, illuminates the demographic dimensions of these new users. They're young people between the ages of 11-15 and older adults over the age of 40; particularly for younger users, this pandemic has cultivated a burgeoning generation of guitarists.
The effects of the pandemic on musical talent, however, spread beyond mere numbers of ownership: new and veteran guitarists have transformed into songwriters and music producers. Music software program Garageband, for instance, experienced a 55% boost in online traction through Google searches; Apple, reported that users had made a collective 13 million downloads from its sound library between February and May. With this once-in-a-century pandemic, a ubiquitous freeze over once robust, intractable economies, working people/students have clearly begun to explore their musical and creative interests.
What implications might these trends of guitar ownership and music production have post-pandemic, on future generations and the music economy? In the most important ways, this explosion of musical interest runs parallel to the Boomer effect of the Baby Boomer generation: as this unusually large generation aged and developed different interests and preferences, the economy responded with equally unusual, rapid velocity to meet their demands. First came the boom in infant-care products during this nascent generation. Fast forward to the year 2020: we are witnessing the climb of medicine and healthcare to accommodate this aging age group.
The cornerstone element of the boomer effect, in its relation to the economy, seems to be a cliff-steep velocity of the economic reaction. Great numbers contribute to greater demand, and greater demand requires a greater supply in order to satisfy consumers. For this generation of musicians, united both in instrument and, mostly, by age, the future might see a similar speed of economic response. In particular, it seems at least possible and perhaps likely that this boom in guitars and music production might intensify musical trends. The Baby Boomer generation corroborates this (although the trends it magnified were tethered to age and not fluctuations in music taste). For instance, the fact that many acoustic players transition toward electric might have an impact on the music that players listen to as time goes on.
As the more popular of the two for beginners, the acoustic guitar has a lower-displaced price range, involves less specialized knowledge and equipment, and for these reasons fosters a greater environment for beginners. Yet as players become more experienced (and for younger newcomers, as they age and earn higher wages) the electric guitar becomes a more viable choice of instrument -- the next evolutionary stage within the guitar genre.
Although the two instruments overlap in the type/genre of music they encourage, they emphasize important differences that make this trend of transition meaningful. One of the electric guitar's advantages over the acoustic is that it is physically easier to play: With the aid of the amplifier, generating sound on the electric requires less pressure on the strings than does the acoustic. This physical advantage then shifts the electric's preference of songs, reaching outward to include more complex compositions with awkward chord shapes and fingering, but pulling away from the basic, purely-strum style of songs on the acoustic (strumming on electrics, in the same way as on acoustics, produces a more muddled sound because of the amplifier). Therefore, rather than listen to the library of acoustic-centric music, an electric player might be more inclined toward musicians like John Mayer, who plays the electric with electric-exclusive techniques.
Perhaps in the coming years, we will see a spike in electric guitar sales. Ancillary equipment—for electric playing, for producing new types of music—might also catch onto this robust, undulating demand for the instrument. However, unlike the Baby Boomers whose aging both created and left behind businesses in the dust, acoustic and electric guitars are similar enough that neither must lose at the rise of the other. Moreover, most guitar stores like Guitar Center supply both items: though the ratio of acoustic to guitar might change in the stores, overall, the guitar world seems set up for success emerging from this COVID-19 pandemic.