Is Playing Guitar ‘Uncool’ Now?

I feel like sometimes I was born in the wrong time, the things I would do to live in the 1970's....

Growing up, my heroes I looked up to were Nebraska Cornhusker QB's and lead guitarists from the 70's and 80's. If it was Zac Taylor, Taylor Martinez or Carlos Santana they were gods in my eyes. To do everything to be like my idols, I did the obvious thing and played football and learned guitar. I was the type of football player who made a difference - not on the stat sheet but was the type of player that forced things and scared the other teams or players.

As a guitar player growing up, I sucked, real bad.... I thought I was great though. It's very painful to look back and think about that little redheaded playing diddles and riffs.

With all that being said, I feel like kids are losing their love of playing an instrument - especially the guitar.

Over the past three years, Gibson’s annual revenue has fallen from $2.1 billion to $1.7 billion, according to data gathered by Music Trades magazine. The company’s 2014 purchase of Philips’s audio division for $135 million led to debt — how much, the company won’t say — and a Moody’s downgrading last year. Fender, which had to abandon a public offering in 2012, has fallen from $675 million in revenue to $545 million. It has cut its debt in recent years, but it remains at $100 million.

With sales falling and a lack of interest from Millennials and newer generations, how will these huge guitar companies find an audience to reach?

Still, the leaders of Gibson, Fender and PRS say they have not given up.

“The death of the guitar, to paraphrase Mark Twain, is greatly exaggerated,” says Fender’s chief executive, Andy Mooney.

He says that the company has a strategy designed to reach millennials. The key, Mooney says, is to get more beginners to stick with an instrument they often abandon within a year. To that end, in July the company will launch a subscription-based service it says will change the way new guitarists learn to play through a series of online tools.