Saturday, January 30, 2021

What Part of the Music Business is Making Money?

Other than elderly rock stars selling their back catalogues, that is. The answer seems to be musical instrument sales, guitar in particular: Did Everyone Buy a Guitar in Quarantine or What?

In conversations with Rolling Stone, instrument sellers Sweetwater, Guitar Center, and Reverb reported a bang-up year for online sales. In 2020, online-only store Sweetwater surpassed $1 billion in revenue for the first time in the company’s 42-year history. It also served over 1.5 million customers in 2020, up from a million in 2019. CEO Chuck Surack says shipping out 15,000 to 20,000 orders a day was normal for most of the year, resulting in about a 40 percent increase from the previous year. And when “Black Friday stuff picked up” the numbers increased to 22,000 to 24,000 orders a day, peaking at about 30,000.

I hope this doesn't mean I have to go back to teaching beginners again...


 

3 comments:

  1. I wouldn't worry about it too much. You only have to teach them how to strum chords.

    You could give advanced lessons to the few that can do it in rhythm.

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