The Market is Growing, I Enjoy Having Dire Straits Songs Explained to me Online, Acoustic Sales and YouTube are Friends, and Other Random Musings…

In late August, Research and Markets announced the addition of the Global Musical Instruments Market 2015 Report to their offerings.

The report claims the global MI market value was $16.05 billion for 2014 and forecasts growth for the industry at a CAGR (“Compound Annual Growth Rate.” I had to look it up) of 1.89 percent over the next five years, valuing it $17.63 billion by 2019.

So, over $1 billion growth in five years – that’s good, right? That billion is spread out “globally,” though, and over half a decade… Still, up is better than down (even if the “up” is only two-ish percent).

Factors seen as contributing to the growth of the market include a rise in disposable income, a greater number of live performances, increased music education initiatives, and demand in emerging countries, among others. Additionally, the increased availability of non-traditional pathways to learning instruments is seen to be a significant factor. An analyst from the team who compiled the report said, “With the advances in web technology, numerous online and tutorial sites such as Justinguitar.com and YouTube.com help consumers learn to play various musical instruments by taking guidance from videos, reference articles, and other teaching methodologies available on these sites. This has simplified the learning process for consumers who are unable to join musical classes because of difficult work schedules. Also, people who cannot afford to pay the high fees of traditional music classes can learn online for free or for minimal fees. Therefore, the availability of learning materials online will encourage consumers to buy musical instruments, which is expected to contribute to the market growth during the forecast period.”

This is the part that really interests me (not that the rest of it doesn’t).

Back in 2007, NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a report, “Learning Guitar for Free (for Now) on YouTube,” which I remember listening to while stuck in traffic on I-95 and which is still available for review up on npr.org. The jist of the program was that there’s this growing phenomenon of folks teaching guitar online for free (two of the teachers profiled had garnered over 3.5 million views in a matter of months and one of those teachers is Justin Sandercoe of the aforementioned Justinguitar.com site), but – dun dun dunnnn!!! – those online tutorials would likely not be free for much longer. John Palfrey, executive director for the Berkman Center of Internet and Society at Harvard Law School explained, “There’s a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright.”

Well, cut to eight years later – the present day – and a quick YouTube search for “guitar lessons” yields over 558,000 results. The first such result, “Play TEN guitar songs with two EASY chords” by one Andy Crowley has well over eight million views since its initial posting two years ago. Amongst those ten two-chord songs outlined include tracks originally recorded by Buffalo Springfield and U2. I’m not calling out Crowley in hopes that teams of lawyers representing Bono and Neil Young descend upon his home and ruin his online venture. I’m suggesting that, while it is absolutely true that individual artists and labels do (frequently) attempt to block certain content, the notion that perceived copyright infringement would spell the end of online music instruction would seem to be much ado about… not that much.

Also, on a personal level, I’d never have bothered to learn “Sultans of Swing” or the solo from “Round and Round” without YouTube. So there’s that.

And how does that sort of online instruction affect the acoustic guitar market – the focus of this month’s issue of MMR – you ask? I think it’s a great factor, but don’t take my word for it. “I think technology has played a big part here with YouTube, and similar, giving an audience to the acoustic player that they never had before,” says Brian Cleary of Faith Guitars in September’s Roundtable (page 37).

So there you have it: our industry is going to grow by two percent over the next five years, online video music lessons aren’t going anywhere, I am perfectly comfortable appreciating both Ratt and Dire Straits simultaneously, and YouTube is great for the acoustic guitar market.

I could’ve just run the above sentence and been done with this.

Hope everyone had a great summer!