Since January of 2021, the domestic labor market has added over 14 million jobs, with the unemployment rate reaching a 50-year low at the beginning of 2024. In May of this year, The Federal Reserve noted that, “real GDP in the U.S. has already returned to its pre-pandemic trend” (while, in the same report, noting that many other advanced foreign economies – AFEs – had not).
Within our own corner of the economy and culture, much has stabilized: The annual Winter NAMM Show is back in a big way – while perhaps not at the record-setting attendance registered in January, 2020; Music China returns as a fully international gathering this October; and both those market segments that experienced lockdown-related booms, as well as those which were hit especially hard by the pandemic have all eased back towards something approaching “business as usual” – or at least usual-ish.
In this month’s Roundtable feature on 4-string electric basses, both YCA’s Yoh Watanabe and Hoshino’s Keita Sakamoto chime in on this latter phenomenon. Watanabe observes, “The bass segment has been regressing in sales coming off the pandemic spike and I expect it to level out and, within a year or so, start to behave more normally,” while Sakamoto adds, “During the pandemic, we saw a surge in demand for beginner guitars, making it one of the busiest times in the industry. While that has now subsided, more professional-minded players are still investing in high-quality instruments to meet their needs.”
And, yet, when talking to, or receiving messages from, many MI retailers – you can see this nearly every month in our regular Dealer Surveys – there’s a widespread anticipation and yearning for a “return to normal after COVID.”
Normal for who, and in what way? And, in 2024, does it really have that much to do with the pandemic at this point?
There have been major changes since the beginning of 2020, for sure, but during what four-plus year stretch in our industry, or any other, have things remained static? I began working at MMR in January of 2002 and folks were still reeling from the after-effects of the dotcom bubble crash in 2001. Who wants a return to the “normal” that was 2008?
Was life considerably easier for brick-and-mortar MI retailers pre-Internet? Damn skippy, it was. That “normal” isn’t coming back, either. And, prior to the interwebs, catalog sales were a challenge and a thorn in everyone’s side – yes, also true! And big boxes, while we’re at it! Boo, change!
But sure, some MI staples that existed in 2019, pre-pandemic, do not, here in the present-day.
For example, Musikmesse is (for now, anyway) a thing of the past, but that has next to nothing to do with COVID. My own Show Report from what wound up being the final such gathering (with the hardly confidence-inspiring headline, “Musikmesse and Prolight + Sound 2019: A Changing Show Grapples with its Identity”) had exhibitors such as Hal Leonard’s Larry Morton conceding, “We do have concerns about the long-term health of the Musikmesse show. With many larger MI suppliers not exhibiting, along with the Tuesday-Friday schedule, we found the overall show traffic and attendance to be less that last year,” and Steve Harvey of C.F. Martin & Co. adding, “We have seen some of our key competitors withdraw completely, or drastically reduce their presence at the show.”
Summer NAMM is also (again, for now, at least) no more, but in its place is the universally well-received NAMM NeXT event, the first of which took place this summer.
Out with the old, in with the new; To everything turn, turn, turn – that kinda thing.
Some 2,500 years ago, Heraclitus observed that “The only constant in life is change.” While I don’t know enough about the man to comment about any other thoughts or maxims that may have issued from his noggin, I feel this one assertion of his, at least, is pretty inarguable. Our regular columnist, award-winning MI retailer and educator Menzie Pittman, bases most of his highly informative monthly installments on the concept of adapting to such change, rather than waiting for whatever recent waves of transformation to magically un-do themselves.
Change is “normal”; Expecting the specific realities of the past to return isn’t.
