We Are The 50%: The Truth Behind the Supposed Decline of the Guitar
This article appears in the thirteenth issue of She Shreds, published in September 2017. Subscribe here and receive a copy of She Shreds Issue 13 as your first issue. This has been edited for digital purposes from it’s original story published in print.
Beginning in June 2017, buzz about the supposed death of the electric guitar started popping up on our radar. The Washington Post, echoed by PBS and NPR, published hand-wringing proclamations that electric guitar sales had declined in the past decade from 1.5 million annual sales to about 1 million, and cited—for some reason—a vintage guitar salesman in his 70s who proposed an answer as to what had caused this alleged problem that he saw as alarming and newsworthy in its own right: American guitar heroes were no more.
Two flagrant issues with these analyses were immediately clear. The first was a conflation of guitar sales with guitar playing. The Washington Post’s way of measuring things would suggest that neither I nor many of the guitar players I know who play used guitars (or guitars we bought new a long time ago) count in the consideration of whether electric guitar culture is dying. The booming business of effects pedals (16% increase in unit sales in the past ten years according to Music Trades) challenges this. The second issue was a sad lack of self-awareness about mourning the hierarchical and hyper-masculine performative decades-gone culture of guitar heroes like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, and assuming that such a culture is the only way to sell guitars or get people to play them. In fact, maybe it’s the leftover dregs of that very culture that are holding us back.
In the five years since the first issue of She Shreds was published, public conversations on inclusivity and respect for women in popular culture have been getting louder and louder. And the resulting milestones—both in the dethroning of prominent misogynistic practices and elevation of feminist epicness—have been increasing in kind. Within the guitar industry, we’ve covered some of the biggest of these evolutions: Ernie Ball’s first-ever mass-produced guitar designed by a woman (St. Vincent, no less), Guitar World trashing its tacky tradition of showcasing gear in the hands of bikini-clad models in its annual gear guide, and Guitar Player Magazine celebrating its 50th anniversary with a list of 50 favorite women guitarists (and the singular Sister Rosetta Tharpe on the cover).
These moments didn’t happen without reason—but first, let’s start with why they matter. For those of us guitar and bass players who identify as women, femme, or gender-conforming, the dearth of acknowledgment for the talent amongst us has been just as glaring as the intensely bro-centric representations of guitar culture that do permeate our society, from testosterone-soaked music festivals to glossy, misogynistic magazines. Some of the worst perpetrators have been guitar brands, with archaic marketing strategies ranging from companies like Gibson hiring booth babes to lure people who fall for that kind of thing at the annual National Association of Music Merchants conference to Dean Guitars posting a photo on social media of a naked model licking a new guitar.
While these tactics have been used for ages, only recently has the pushback been significant enough to stop some of this absurdity. Until now, the public hasn’t tended to see, let alone challenge, the crimes of marketing as being as toxic as other mainstream media forms. Because, frankly, who amongst us really wants to care about advertisements? Why seek change in what we don’t want to see in the first place? And when we do finally call for change, it’s often against flagrantly problematic representations of women rather than in support of positive, realistic representations of all of us who play guitar.
But the messages that these marketers disseminate matter. Just like any other attitudes rooted in stereotypes rather than truth, the ideas forwarded by ads (and other more chameleon forms of marketing) across the public landscape trespass into our everyday experiences, irritating those of us with our guard up but, more importantly, influencing the unsuspecting among us with the implication that maybe this is really the way the world is or, worse, that it’s okay. Each billboard, Hulu ad, movie poster, product placement, and website banner is just a drop in the bucket of our daily lives, but the collective message we’re fed by them about gender and society is an ocean. And mainstream guitar culture has been drowning in the likes of Gibson ads with “Watch for flying panties” splashed across them, and a Vox Amps advertisement asking you, “Like what she’s wearing? Not the bikini, dude.”
As the idea of marketing guitars solely to straight, masculine men goes from passé to unprofitable, companies have been scrambling to appeal to the very people they’ve ignored for decades. It’s a lesson also recently learned by another industry in which women have long been ignored: cars. In 2012, a study revealed that more women in the United States have drivers’ licenses than men. By the next year, Porsche had joined the legions of carmakers trying to capitalize on this apparent revelation by designing a sleek luxury crossover SUV with young urban women in mind. Unlike faux-feminist gimmicks like Cosmopolitan’s SEAT Mii that drew a combination of wrath and head-scratching for being marketed like accessories rather than means of travel, the car was generally heralded as a new classic. Only two years later, in 2015, the company made headlines with its best financial year in company history, with less than 32% of its revenue coming from its traditional sports cars.
Now, the guitar industry may be experiencing the very same wake-up call. In 2015, Fender hired Evan Jones as its Chief Marketing Officer with the goal of driving a new era of growth for the legendary guitar manufacturer. Fresh out the gate, Jones spearheaded a national survey of U.S. guitar buyers under age 45 to see just who their untapped audiences might be. What did that survey reveal?
“Fifty percent of all buyers of new guitars in the last five years have been female,” Jones tells She Shreds. That’s right: According to Fender’s research, the future of the guitar industry is gender-diverse, playing the instrument for fun rather than in pursuit of guitar herodom, and is less obsessed with specs.
Since then, Jones reports that Fender has been undergoing widespread change, including its newly rebuilt marketing staff, product lines, and publicity. Last year, it rolled out a freshly modified take on their classic Offset Series, providing affordable, lightweight, and tone-varying options of the Duo-Sonic and Mustang bodies (favored by alt-rock musicians like Liz Phair and Kurt Cobain). Fender also included Warpaint and Bully as two of the four bands featured in the new line’s promotional campaign.
“As the idea of marketing guitars solely to straight, masculine men goes from passé to unprofitable, companies have been scrambling to appeal to the very people they’ve ignored for decades.”
Jones explains that the results of these marketing campaigns were as instantaneous as they were diverse. “There was an orange Duo-Sonic guitar that we featured with Bully,” Jones says. “That was our fastest-selling guitar of all the Offset guitars we launched. I remember walking into guitar shops in New York City that had [sold out] cards on the wall, where older players had come in and wanted to buy it because they saw the advertising.” Jones’ point is an important one: Fender had found commercial success, not with one target group of a particular demographic but with loyalists and newcomers alike, by genuinely including popular bands with women guitarists to promote a product that resonated with players of varied backgrounds. “I think if you were to ask a 16 to 24-year-old today how they see gender… they don’t see it the same way that people did 20, 30, 40 years ago,” says Jones. “I think the biggest compliment that we could pay any artist is to look at them with the same level of investment, the same level of perspective and support, whether they’re male or female.”
We suspect that if Fender continues evolving with a broader, more complex audience in mind, it could find itself with Porsche-esque results. But changes in product lines and marketing strategies aren’t the only things uniting the two brands; their reasons for adapting to their newfound reality have something in common, too. Women aren’t just an opportunity for these companies and their respective industries—they are lifelines.
The revelation that women drove cars just as much as men hit the automotive industry just as they were recovering from the crisis of 2008-2010, in which car sales had slumped 40% from ten years prior. Look at guitar sales in the United States during the same time period and you’ll see another industry’s revenue pummeled by the recession: Music Trades data shows revenue from guitar sales dropped 30% from 2005 to 2009, and the total number of guitars sold declined from 3.3 million in 2005 to 2.4 million in 2010. Even the most iconic of brands suffered. In 2012, Fender withdrew from an attempt to go public when investors balked, citing the company’s debt and the guitar industry’s poor outlook. Things have improved since then, but the need to ensure that no potential guitar buyer is being left out remains. Fender’s strategy of being inclusive rather than tokenizing is a cornerstone of that. “We do not ever intend to offer a ‘women’s guitar.’ There’s no need,” explained Jones in a recent interview with Music Trades. “There’s a very real need, however, to offer electric and acoustic guitars that acknowledge that guitarists—male and female—come in all shapes and sizes physically.”
Jones made a similar point in his interview with She Shreds, stating that the company is expanding the base of artists it works with to reflect a holistic picture of today’s guitar players, rather than pigeonhole people into stereotypes. “Our ambition is that we will, over the next five years, be able to look back and say that not only did we, yes, grow the brand, but we helped introduce a whole new generation of players to the guitar, and we helped elevate the profile of an incredibly diverse body of guitar players across multiple genres, regardless of their gender,” he says. “That’s really key for us.”
With some companies like Fender stepping up to the call of the 21st century rather than staying stuck in the past, there may be hope yet for the guitar industry. But the work is far from over. Fender’s willingness to dedicate its own resources to finding accurate data on how diverse guitar players truly are came out of a lack of such information existing in the first place. Even Music Trades, the closest thing to an authority on music industry data, is starved in this department; the best they have procured so far is a questionnaire answered between 2011 and 2014 by 1,117 people who were found through their warranty registration for a new guitar worth $900 or more and made by one of “two prominent guitar manufacturers.”
One finding of this stunningly flawed research was that seven percent of guitar buyers are women. How is an industry steeped in stereotypes supposed to change when its source of thought leadership is suggesting that less than 10% of guitarists are women? Improvements in the representations of not just gender but race, age, size, disability, sexuality, and every other aspect of our socio-political identities have a long way to go, but the road to that—at least for profit-driven entities who invest their time, energy, and resources where they expect to make money back—is paved first by documentation that they, that we, exist. It’s time for the hibernating heavyweights of this industry to wake up. Let’s make sure they do.
UPDATE: We asked Fender if, since the shift in marketing, there had been a significant increase in numbers, including an increase in consumer diversity, profit, or socials.
A member of their PR team answered saying that “across the board in social, web traffic and PR the numbers are significantly higher.”
Comments
Thanks for posting this. By far the best response to that article I’ve seen.
Comment by DanO on September 19, 2017 at 10:39 amThis is everything – THANK YOU.
Comment by Heather Farr on September 19, 2017 at 1:44 pm[…] artistas femeninas que no son promocionadas por los medios masivos, publicó un artículo titulado “Somos el 50%: La verdad tras el supuesto declive de la guitarra”, en donde argumentan que la baja de las seis cuerdas se debe a que las empresas que venden estos […]
Pingback by Estudio afirma que las mujeres están salvando la vigencia de las guitarras eléctricas — Futuro.cl on September 22, 2017 at 7:36 am[…] Mirá el informe completo. […]
Pingback by Las mujeres están salvando a la guitarra eléctrica - Somos Rock on September 22, 2017 at 12:33 pmVery interesting article! However, St. Vincent’s Ernie Ball guitar is not the first mass-produced guitar designed by a woman. Daisy Rock’s Tish Ciravolo and several artists she’s work with, including Vikki Peterson from The Bangles, designed mass produced guitars years before the St Vincent guitar was released.
I was recently on a panel discussing the future of guitar with luminaries from Guitar Player, Fender, Fishman, Gretsch, D’Addario and more. I was heartened by their open minds and willingness to redefine what a “guitar hero” is. We as an industry have a long way to go but we ain’t dead yet!
Comment by Laura B. Whitmore, The Women's International Music Network on September 29, 2017 at 9:17 amMaybe it could be amended to the first GOOD guitar designed by a woman. Daisy rock is absolute garbage.
Comment by Amy on December 19, 2017 at 12:21 pmFinally.
Comment by Tish on January 7, 2020 at 6:27 pmAnother woman supporting woman comment. Thanks Amy, now give back the free guitar you asked for….
Comment by Tish on January 7, 2020 at 6:30 pmI have looked everywhere and used every search engine to try and find that offensive Vox amps ad you mention – and I cannot find it. I am sure it exists, you would not have mentioned it otherwise, but it is very well hidden. And I am sure it is a really, really old ad or perhaps done by a music shop or musician without approval from Vox themselves. Certainly since Korg took over the Vox brand 25 years ago such an ad would never be even contemplated much less done. And it seems strange that an amplifier company would do anything referring to curves or shape when amplifiers typically are not curved. I get that you don’t want to print that ad – why put into circulation when it should be well and truly gone – but it is such a big distance from Vox of the last 25 years. Vox has women running sales and marketing worldwide (not just consulting) and has done so for year. Vox also has a lady in charge of future product planning. None of this is tokenism but a recognition of talent, smarts and vision. They don’t need to have their hard work smeared by an ad that simply doesn’t represent who they are and where the company has been for decades.
Comment by John on October 4, 2017 at 9:09 pmHi John,
Appreciate your concern and am flattered that a VP at Korg has taken an interest in my article. Your company is doing plenty of good work from what I can tell, and I have no doubt there are women working in your and Vox’s marketing departments. However, since my research is being challenged, I feel the need to correct you. The Vox ad I referenced was published in multiple issues of Guitar World. I had spotted it and noticed its frequency and flagrant usage of female objectification while conducting a different research project in 2016 and snapped a photo of it, so while I can’t tell you exactly how long it ran, I can show you that it was certainly published by Vox and in the last 25 years, since the advertisement’s copyright states the year 2000. You can review it here yourself: https://m.imgur.com/a/JPavK
The ad is a strong example of problematic marketing strategies utilized by many leaders in the guitar industry in the 21st century, and I stand by it. It need not represent Vox’s marketing strategy in 2017 in order to be relevant to the discussion. In fact, the article is about that very transformation that has been taking place, and so I think it’s fantastic that there has been a change in strategy since that ad campaign. But the assertion that that ad was published 25+ years ago or without Vox’s or Korg’s knowledge is incorrect.
Best,
Comment by Natalie on October 5, 2017 at 12:18 pmNatalie
I promise I was not “challenging” just questioning, and I appreciate your patience and reply. As I suspected that ad was not from Korg or Vox international, it was done by one distributor acting on their own. I doubt you will find that ad anywhere else outside that one market. This does NOT excuse the ad, but it was not a corporate ad. And as I say since then we have women running our international sales and also our international marketing (for a long time, not just recently) and my defensiveness is because I know how hard they have been working towards a better world for many years. Every company has something in their past they regret which does not excuse the past, but for Vox and for the current staff to be left hanging because of pretty much one ad from 17 years ago in one market just seems unfair. It should be acknowledged, it must be noted but it is not where we have been for a very long time and not where Korg has ever been with Vox since Vox became a part of Korg.
Comment by John M. on October 7, 2017 at 8:37 pmWow John, nice hand wringing. I believe the words you were looking for were “I’m sorry”. I highly doubt that your distributor just put this ad in a national rag on their own without someone in corporate at least knowing about it. Even if they did, it’s still your responsibility.
To Ms. Baker, great read! I scoffed out loud at the WaPo article which seemed completely out of touch with what’s actually happening in music retail and the music business in general. One only needs to look at the slew of great female-fronted indie rock bands that released killer albums this year to see what’s really going on. Thanks for the insight.
Comment by Jesse on October 17, 2017 at 10:58 amWhy would you call that “hand wringing” or think that he owed an apology? As he stated after seeing the ad, that is an ad that an unconnected distributor put out, completely beyond the control of his company. He doesn’t owe an apology. People with your attitude are part of the problem in society. It was an ad with an attractive woman on it. Big deal. I’ve seen plenty of ads targeting women with attractive men in them. There was no derogatory reference.
Comment by Sam Roney on December 14, 2017 at 4:01 pmTake responsibility for the ad, dammit! It’s not like anyone can put out an ad with Nazi imagery and slap a Vox logo on it. Someone at Vox was ok with the ad…and furthermore if Vox didn’t agree with it they could cut ties with the distributor. Your “explaining” just makes me lose respect for your company. “We even have female employees” sounds like the new “I even have Black friends”, well congrats you managed to hire someone from 50% of the population. No excuses, just do better.
Comment by Mark on December 16, 2017 at 11:49 amThe add is dated 2000 so it could be from that year or at least couple years after. This isn’t some old ’60s add.
Comment by Grant C. on October 17, 2017 at 6:24 pmAlso, that’s an international add in an international magazine. The fine print that gave the date also directly references VOX’s NY address (so it’s a North American publication) and the voxamps.co.uk URL follows it…definitely from Vox themselves. The article style for content seen in the upper left corner of the image (from the opposing page) looks very much like the from Guitar Player in the early 2000s.
Comment by Grant C. on October 17, 2017 at 6:32 pm1999-2001
Comment by Bill on June 23, 2018 at 9:12 pm” to Dean Guitars posting a photo on social media of a naked model licking a new guitar.”
This made me laugh. If you knew Dean Zalinzky you’d laugh too. Those old Dean adds, and the ones for Zalinsky guitars when he left Dean, used to make m cringe. On the same note, its certainly not above the current CEO of Gibson to use guitar babe’s to lure men to the booth. I mean, why worry about QC and competitive pricing when you can just use sex. Makes perfect sense, right?
Seriously though, I’m glad the industry is shifting and changing. I grew up playing in the 80’s and as a teen in rock bands, was in to most of the things your against. But I grew up, and the industry should too.
Comment by Michael on December 16, 2017 at 5:36 amExcellent rebuttal to the original article, which I must admit to having read with puzzlement. Even the quote from George Gruhn that seemed to spark the article appeared to be taken out of context and then blown up out of all proportion. Who would’ve thought the media capable of such a thing!? I amnot sure of the numbers of guitar sales, but what i do know is that on line it seems that the guitar community has never been stronger.
Comment by Stuart Peel on December 16, 2017 at 9:05 pmI am just over 60 and have been playing guitar all my life. My wife and partner of nearly 40 years decided to learn the guitar earlier this year as she approached her 60th birthday. She now owns a Taylor Mini GS acoustic and an American Pro Telecaster, and is already reading guitar mags plotting her next acquisition. Going on holidays now means taking a guitar with us. The guitar certainly isn’t dying out at our place.
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Pingback by A Brief History of Fender Offsets on December 18, 2017 at 10:03 amI got here by way of Reverb and found an exceptionally well reasoned and written article that makes me feel optimistic for the future of music made and played on the guitar. My guitar background is 50 years as a male hobbyist with many years playing an average of 60 gigs per year in bars, restaurants, weddings, corporate and fund raising events. As a beginner, I could find just three women electric players to help inspire me, Carol Kaye, Mary Osborne and Mary Ford. Given the creative and establishment-defying spirit of the late ’60s and early ’70s you could easily imagine that by the year 2000 at least 25% of the accomplished and successful electric guitar players would be women. The fact that that did not happen indicates a lost opportunity for the development and enrichment of our shared musical culture. For me, the silver lining to that past is my choice to believe that there is a momentum growing that will usher in a new era of inspiring electric guitar music driven by great new players who happen to also be women. The potential is simply undeniable.
Comment by Warren Jayne on December 21, 2017 at 6:00 am[…] We Are The 50%: The Truth Behind the Supposed Decline of the Guitar – She Shreds Magazine (September 19, 2017) […]
Pingback by HipsterSpinster’s Best Albums of 2017 – HipsterSpinster on December 27, 2017 at 7:07 amThis doesn’t explain slumping guitar sales since women were never a target demographic to begin with when sales were way higher. The decline of the electric guitar has nothing to do with any type of advertising but rather is exclusively due to the fact that new guitars simply cost too much for the average person. Fender dealers now want $600+ for a Strat or Tele made in Mexico. Same $600 price tag for the formerly cheap Epiphone Les Paul knock-offs. And the real Strats/Teles start around $2000 and the Gibson Les Paul standards are $2500 and up. And those are just the American STANDARDS. Let’s not even get into how much the customs cost. Schecter, which produces a lot of midrange guitars, now wants $1000+ for the same Korean models they were selling from $600-800 just a few years ago. I saw a Jackson SL2L Pro Soloist going for $1100….made in Indonesia. Those running the guitar companies are simply out of their minds.
TL;DR: New guitars are simply too expensive for the average person. After all your bills are paid, who has $1000-2000 to dump on a KOREAN guitar?
Comment by DZ313 on February 9, 2018 at 5:49 pmYou can buy a perfectly playable used squire and amp for under 150. No one needs an American made instrument to become a good guitarist. I agree that prices are high for the higher quality stuff but in my opinion, if you aren’t playing paid gigs, you don’t need a high quality instrument. I’m sure many of the greats made due with some cheap low quality stuff when they first started out. All you need is passion and a cheap axe and your set. If that passion someday leads to skills worthy of a big stage then it’s time to bite the bullet and invest in a gig worthy instrument. Until then, the cheap stuff does just fine if you ask me. Playing guitar is totally within reach for even the tightest of budgets.
Comment by Brad on June 18, 2018 at 11:36 amStellar article. Thank you for the well articulated, deeply researched and thoughtful post. Remarkable really.
Comment by Tim on March 4, 2018 at 10:21 amPut both sexy men and sexy women on the ads.
Comment by Scott on April 1, 2018 at 9:15 amPutting neutral ‘femme’-bots in the ads doesn’t work.
Advertise to the intended market. Humans like fundamental beauty. Many of us naturally are drawn to fundamental beauty,… which is easy on the eyes,… automatic,… for the goodness of humanity.
[…] Fender reported in September of 2017: 50% of guitar buyers from the last five years are women. What does that mean? It means […]
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Pingback by NEWS ROUNDUP: Market Hotel Is Back, NYC's Cabaret Law & More - Audiofemme on August 16, 2018 at 12:55 pm[…] its marketing strategy around a massive new audience that it’d previously been ignoring. It promoted a new millennial-focused line of guitars in 2016 with the women-led bands Warpaint and Bully, for […]
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Pingback by POTQ Magazine on October 18, 2018 at 9:02 am[…] Rosetta Thorpe and Tracy Chapman to St. Vincent and Ellie Goulding, female guitarists have been shredding for centuries. But past research has shown that when it comes to marketing guitars, women are often ignored by […]
Pingback by Study Finds Half Of New Guitarists Are Women – VGI Fun on October 18, 2018 at 11:42 amA little too hyper-feminized here. Do your homework and you’d know that both Bonnie Raitt in 1995 and Mary Kaye in 2005 had their own signature Stratocasters well before hipster noise maker Annie Clark. Courtney Love also had her own Squier Venus model in the 90s with a totally original design. Avril Lavigne also has her own Squier Tele model in the 2000s. In 1998, Martin guitar released the Joan Baez signature. In 2005, Alvarez gave Ani DiFranco her own signature model. Ernie Ball was in no way ground breaking in this regard. In fact, they were clearly late to the game – it just got a lot of buzz because it was controversial that she even deserved a signature in the first place. Take that as you will, when the guys from Fall Out Boy and Sum 41 got their own models it’s not saying much for talent depending on the artists. While I’m super happy to see that 50% female buyers, it’s a rather arbitrary number that someone threw out there. Did they cover every single guitar manufacturer in the world? I doubt it. Also to add to your hyper masculine argument, don’t forget guitar powerhouses like Lita Ford and Jennifer Batten were right there shredding with the dudes – big hair, leather and hot-rodded axes. They’d fit right into that picture. The times and music WERE hyper-masculine and thank God they were, otherwise we’d never have Van Halen or Predator playing at the metroplex. People will look back on the 2010s as a hyper feminine time perhaps, with loads of major issues being tackled by society.
The “problem” if you can call it that is 2-fold. Back in the day, in order for a company to want to make a model for a woman she had to earn her reputation through her extraordinary skill. There really weren’t that many “deserving” ladies. Just because you play guitar also doesn’t earn you a signature model. Do you forget how many great men were constantly overlooked because they didn’t measure up to the “guitar hero” standard? Many of these men have seen the light in the modern day, but would have never gotten a sniff at the time, so it’s not just women. The 90s and Lilith Fair sparked a lot more female guitarists, something I loved seeing as a kid. I have a lot of respect for the songwriters of that time.
Flash forward to today, and you have crappy Taylor Swift guitars because she’s the only major female player highlighted in any mainstream media. But you could also use this argument for guys too. Who is the guitar hero of the 2010s? It sure ain’t John Mayer, he came before. Is it Ed Sheeran, with yer another crappy signature model? Who knows, but that’s the 2nd part of the issue – the music industry is so far skewed into formulaic, cyclical pop and rap that guitars, let alone a guitar solo, are ever heard or god forbid featured in the music. Modern music and the industry itself have practically removed guitar-driven rock from the charts. The kids I teach all are forced to look back (thankfully, but unfortunately) to the past for inspiration and ideas on what a guitar can really do.
I take issue with your presentation of a guitar solo as well, as if it’s some overt masculine thing. Dudes would rip because it looked cool and got attention. And the ladies of the time did the exact same thing to prove their own worth. A guitar solo is an isolated expression of the player and the music and is absolutely gender neutral.
Until modern music and society itself makes wholesale changes to affect the integrity of said music, I don’t see guitars ever being as popular as they were prior to the 2010s. If anything, the primary buyers are older, have more dispensable income and are looking to recreate those great moments of the past and maybe even create new ones. I’m at least happy to see that most young guitarists are looking backwards to the 90s to find great inspiration and some excellent female heroes from the time.
Comment by Ian on August 31, 2019 at 4:49 pmMY wife lost her modelling job holding those guitars, girl power huh? Fuck you.
Comment by Bonn Thombus on December 6, 2019 at 10:34 amSorry but the sales numbers are off, and not by a little! So is the precipitous 50% drop in sales as well. Just to give you an idea, a single large GC store will easily do $1.5M in a single month. The guitar industry is hundreds of millions of dollars in size.
I know you were quoting someone else, but you should still try to confirm the quote using other sources and suggest you do more research before publishing something like this. Googling Music Trades Magazine will give you the data you are looking for. Especially if you want to be taken seriously.
Comment by David Settimi on January 7, 2020 at 4:13 pm[…] Imagine this: Just eight years ago this was normal. And nobody who had any capital investment could imagine that women were real life musicians with varied tastes, styles, backgrounds, and identities. No, Ernie Ball wasn’t making guitars with room for breasts and Fender wasn’t spending millions to tell us that we’ve been right all along. […]
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