SnidelyWhiplash
Poster Extraordinaire
Weird Al, eat your
out! 
Very accomplished & how many folks do you see playing the accordion, nowadays???
Who’s Buying Guitars? Kids Don’t Care About Rock
- Thread starter sax4blues
- Start date
Weird Al, eat your
out! Very accomplished & how many folks do you see playing the accordion, nowadays???
loopfinding
Poster Extraordinaire
maybe it looks like there's no rock from the vantage point of boomer land, but i'm still in my 30s and honestly i just can't keep up with how many indie or metal bands there are these days. go to youtube channels like kexp or scope bandcamp or any genre subreddit. there's thousands of current bands/records being posted every week through these avenues.
there's so much music and trends/currents surface and die off so fast that there's no longer anything like "this record, this is a watershed record." there isn't even enough time to hear or process it all. by the time you've combed through to find something interesting, it's always something that's like 5 years old and already old news. you have to stick to a few threads and hope you didn't miss out on anything too much.
there's so much music and trends/currents surface and die off so fast that there's no longer anything like "this record, this is a watershed record." there isn't even enough time to hear or process it all. by the time you've combed through to find something interesting, it's always something that's like 5 years old and already old news. you have to stick to a few threads and hope you didn't miss out on anything too much.
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And that the overwhelming majority of them are student level instruments.
Well, what did y'all expect? The electric guitar has become something so ubiquitous that no-one's paying any special attention anymore, because everyone and their grampa's dog is playing the thing and most of it is nothing to write home about. You don't see that many people standing on the corner ogling city buses either...
It could also be argued that then it was played for a living and greatly appreciated. Art, music, and philosophy are all that really matter. They are the only things societies and civilizations are remembered for.
Nobody can tell you who the best lawyer in Ancient Greece was, but we still remember the thinkers and sculptors.
Who was the highest paid banker during the renaissance? Couldn’t tell you.
When Beethoven and Mozart were at the top of the charts (so to speak) who was the most successful businessman in Vienna? Anyone?
There was a time when if the local governing official liked your acting or painting or singing, you could be put on a pension for life. Never have to work again. Because humans used to value this stuff. They valued it because it matters. It’s all that matters. Nobody is going to remember anything in a thousand years but culture. If our culture is crap, we’ll be remembered as crap. No matter how successful we may be in other ways.
So I would argue that yes, the world does owe entertainers and creators a living. Sadly, the world is dropping the ball and not holding up its end.
Cue in folks claiming their $200 Squiers are just as good as your CS axe.
Well you can tell they are, because they’re both made out of wood, and they both have pickups and strings, so what’s the difference?
stick around a while and we'll see where you're at in 3 years
MARKETING! Oh wait, you were being facetious werencha
loopfinding
Poster Extraordinaire
there are artists on spotify or wherever racking up hundreds of thousands of plays per month that you and nobody you know even knows exists. i've written music for other people that literally has millions of plays, and i'm a total nobody. like, i've seen zoomer kids who know all the lyrics by heart and post on reddit about it. it's absolutely surreal where things are at.
the house is the one profiting off of it, but that's a problem with [spotify, youtube, etc]. i don't think it has no cultural value. it's just that there is no top-down indication of what's "important" anymore, no notion of "pay the experts to expert." and it's semi-warranted. any idiot can put a good, if not great idea out into the ether. old school musicians with a stick up their ass about skill or talent should probably realize that by now. music means different things to different people, and we should welcome that sort of democratization and diversity.
companies like spotify and youtube and all that are exploiting content creators, they're bad systems, but it's not the fault of people who listen to and appreciate the music. if anything, recorded music should be free-free at this point and we should create non-profit platforms like wikipedia to distribute it to them. if you want to support me and give me money, come to my show - i think that's the part we are unfortunately losing sight of.
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Strat Jacket
Tele-Holic
I would counter that the late, great Jeff Beck could make your $200.00 Squier sound like a CS Strat, while the inverse is not true.
G Stone496
Tele-Meister
There are kids out there wanting to learn and interested in guitar. I’m 26 and in my small circle of friends and family, I’ve encouraged/taught 4 kids in their early teens. I hope to encourage/teach many more in the future.
This may not be representative because my life revolves around music. And I can’t really get a feel if it is a significant percentage of kids or not. But I am constantly running into very good and excellent guitar players in their late teens and early ‘20s.
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MelodicBend
Tele-Meister
Very proud of these kids! They've got guts!
The guitar is doing just fine. Please read...
You wouldn't really know it by following pop music and MTV, but Rock is still very much alive and so is guitar. Relax.
We're stuck in an age where all this doomsday speech and sales numbers (music and instruments) show a woeful decline, but it's more of a reshuffling of priorities and economic correction because times change.
Every argument about the death of rock and guitar can be made about pretty much every other genre and instrument but these scary ghost stories are mostly a fallacy. Here are some sticking points:
1. Music and Arts which has historically made lessons and performances their bread and butter are doing absolutely fine compared to...
2. Guitar Center, who grew out of control by following the Wall street model, going after and undercutting competitors, and risking their own profits and financial stability for the sake of growth. Just because Guitar Center sucks, doesn't mean guitars do too and people don't play and shop for guitars. It's just that there's not enough musicians on earth to support Guitar Center's reckless financial aspirations.
3. Music Labels are all struggling to learn how to make money (for themselves, not the artist under contract) in this new age. Music app commission, promotion deals, venue fees, and other costs have risen dramatically. Too many hands in the pot now, so they pick a select few artists and promote them sky high. That's why pop music is even bigger and more annoying than ever. This yields a few less guitars in mainstream music. Rock and other genres are still around but have pivoted in the industry in ways our favorite groups back in the day never had to.
4. Touring rock bands, guitar YouTube, and other avenues are bigger and better than ever. Look around.
5. Companies such as Charvel, Ibanez, and PRS are producing some of the greatest affordable guitars the world has ever seen at a very large scale and selling out stock all over the world.
Keep the kids playing and having fun.
The guitar is doing just fine. Please read...
You wouldn't really know it by following pop music and MTV, but Rock is still very much alive and so is guitar. Relax.
We're stuck in an age where all this doomsday speech and sales numbers (music and instruments) show a woeful decline, but it's more of a reshuffling of priorities and economic correction because times change.
Every argument about the death of rock and guitar can be made about pretty much every other genre and instrument but these scary ghost stories are mostly a fallacy. Here are some sticking points:
1. Music and Arts which has historically made lessons and performances their bread and butter are doing absolutely fine compared to...
2. Guitar Center, who grew out of control by following the Wall street model, going after and undercutting competitors, and risking their own profits and financial stability for the sake of growth. Just because Guitar Center sucks, doesn't mean guitars do too and people don't play and shop for guitars. It's just that there's not enough musicians on earth to support Guitar Center's reckless financial aspirations.
3. Music Labels are all struggling to learn how to make money (for themselves, not the artist under contract) in this new age. Music app commission, promotion deals, venue fees, and other costs have risen dramatically. Too many hands in the pot now, so they pick a select few artists and promote them sky high. That's why pop music is even bigger and more annoying than ever. This yields a few less guitars in mainstream music. Rock and other genres are still around but have pivoted in the industry in ways our favorite groups back in the day never had to.
4. Touring rock bands, guitar YouTube, and other avenues are bigger and better than ever. Look around.
5. Companies such as Charvel, Ibanez, and PRS are producing some of the greatest affordable guitars the world has ever seen at a very large scale and selling out stock all over the world.
Keep the kids playing and having fun.
G Stone496
Tele-Meister
I see some young kids busking in their late teens and early 20s that are very good. I don’t know, I think busking unfairly gets a bad name sometimes. I have some friends who busk occasionally.
If you’re a good musician and find a good spot with a lot of traffic, you can make some good dough. Buskers even have these little credit card scanners that hook up to their cellphones now.
Of course you will also see some buskers that seem like they’re doing it out of desperate necessity. We can’t paint all buskers with the same brush.
In the NYC subways you can sometimes hear concert level musicians playing. They’re just practicing to keep their chops up between gigs and collecting some dough at the same time.
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I'm not implying all buskers are incapable of having a career off the streets. My point is there are some amazing players that just can't keep it together. I've known more than a few.
teletail
Friend of Leo's
Talent may be the least important factor in success. Just listen to the radio.
catseye360
TDPRI Member
Who is buying guitars? Ever notice all the ads for Guitar instruction "systems" for people in their 40's, 50's, and 60's? LOL
JohnnyThul
Tele-Holic
Hm, it depends on the exact time frame, I'd say
But, the idea of professional musicians, taking money for their service is actually also a few millennias old. And it makes sense. If you have a special skill, and/or can use a specialized tool that takes time for training and money to buy, of course you want to monetize it.The idea of music being a "hobby" is pretty new.
Call Me Al
Tele-Holic
This is what I’ve been seeing. As public school bands are getting cut, the private schools are moving in to replace them. I’ll tell ya, learning classic rock is way more fun than the concert band stuff I was initiated on. These kids are lucky, and seem to love it!I teach private lessons and School of Rock (rock band classes) at a high school, they care about rock round here, I can assure you!️
This is all exactly right. I am in my late 30s, and I used to believe some of the old "rock is dead" nonsense, too. But I was probably focusing on the radio, or on Billboard chart rankings. And these things only give you a snapshot of a very particular type of popularity. And one that is becoming less relevant by the day. If you find yourself, especially as an older person, bemoaning what is "popular these days," it's worthwhile to examine the underlying assumptions. How sure are you what is truly trendy and popular? And how is that popularity determined?
I stopped following new music for a long time. But last year, in a quest to discover new rock music, I started really using Spotify to the fullest. And as @loopfinding said, not only did I find rock music to love, I found more of it than it is possible to experience. I have already found bands and sub-genres that are among my favorites of all time, and I have only scratched the surface. I am more excited and energized by the state of rock music now than I was when nu-metal or grunge were regularly selling millions. Rock is dead. Long live rock.
I'll just add that we are no longer living in the age of monoculture, where the music we can hear is dictated by a dozen record labels and radio station owners. Our culture is fractured and siloed now, both for better and for worse. There are a handful of huge pop stars (Beyonce, Taylor Swift, etc.) with enough talent and cultural "juice" to break through to something approximating the monolithic success of old, but they are an elite minority.
The other 99% of music exists on a smaller scale, servicing smaller and more specialized audiences. All of the music you love is still being made, and is still successful in its own way - you just have to seek it out. Great rock bands are still making great rock music. And if I'm getting enjoyment and fulfillment out of that (and I am), it makes no difference to me what other people are enjoying, or what makes it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The other 99% of music exists on a smaller scale, servicing smaller and more specialized audiences. All of the music you love is still being made, and is still successful in its own way - you just have to seek it out. Great rock bands are still making great rock music. And if I'm getting enjoyment and fulfillment out of that (and I am), it makes no difference to me what other people are enjoying, or what makes it to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
