Fender: girls that are driving sales

Musicman20

I think its fantastic that more women are getting noticed as musicians; just how it should be. 

CHRISB50

I drive past my local music shop most days on the way to the gym. It always seems to be girls waiting outside for lessons with their classical guitars in gig bags.

I presume all the boys are indoors discussing their next purchase on t'internet rather than taking lessons

EricTheWeary

I thought Fender were saying this about two years ago.

Having sat through many, many hours of young children playing musical instruments what I tended to see was overall a 50-50 split but by secondary school age mostly only the girls sticking with it. A lot of this was orchestral instruments so maybe the switch to guitar is about finding those instruments less relevant.  

DulcetJones

I can see this, most of the "alternative" bands with girls  that I see are playing Teles and Mustangs.

carlos

CHRISB50 said:

I drive past my local music shop most days on the way to the gym. It always seems to be girls waiting outside for lessons with their classical guitars in gig bags.

I presume all the boys are indoors discussing their next purchase on t'internet rather than taking lessons

Playing guitar is for losers. Winners buy/sell/trade guitars.

Shrews

Anyone seen the actual survey for this? 

I wonder if it changes with age? I've taken it up at the age of 51 and my guitar tutor says his pupils are mainly guys between 30 and 50, who have told their Mrs they would like to play guitar, subsequently given one as a Christmas present, tried to learn it themselves, got stuck, put the guitar away in a cupboard and a few years later decided they really should do something with that strange looking object in the cupboard taking up space and gathering dust.

He has just one woman from 20 pupils on his books and she's only learning it because her son is.

EricTheWeary

Having had a quick look this does correspond to the 2016 survey , the update is that Fender have identified sales to females ( although are retailers collecting gender information  about buyers and then about who the end user is? I don't know that they aren't, just surprises me a bit if they are). 
If this is through school lessons I guess private teachers aren't seeing a change at the moment.

Whitecat

Fender sells direct now too so can collate data from that as well as retailers and people who “register” their instruments (presuming they have such a program... I know you can register Custom Shop stuff but I’ve never personally registered a Fender USA instrument). 

PolarityMan

I think there might be an effect due to the drop in sales to new rock-derivitive genre fans. I think rock type genre's have always appealed to adolescent boys, particularly ones with an anti-authoritatrian or pro-indivudal streak and we havent really had one of those enjoy huge success for a while. Last one was prob djent and that was really much more introspective.

What you're left with probably holds more cross gender appeal.

Whitecat

The other thing is that the more they get this message out there, the more it will likely self-propagate...

Flanging_Fred

Danny1969 said:

The most gifted guitarist I was ever in a band with was a girl called Jess Lewis, she was gig'ing a Fender Tel despite being sent some Ibanez jazzy things to try out. She's an awesome bass player as well. Locally here we have loads of great female muso's

I took this video of Jess busking in Horsham. I sat mesmerised for about an hour watching her. She must have thought I was a very weird stalker or something...

Clearly ridiculously talented.

thegummy

Musicman20 said:

I think its fantastic that more women are getting noticed as musicians; just how it should be. 

I agree - and not from some kind of hippy protester "equality for all" angle - just that the females I do see are just as good as most of the males I see so everyone is just losing out if there are less of them.

I actually have 2 friends who are big in to music but refuse to listen to female musicians. I don't get it at all, it's not even as if they make different but equal music - they just make the same music that men make.

thegummy

DulcetJones said:

I can see this, most of the "alternative" bands with girls  that I see are playing Teles and Mustangs.

That is true actually - for all the female guitar players I see these days, I'm struggling to think of many who play any other brand than Fender.

Brittany Howard plays an SG but in the indie rock genre where I've seen the prevalence of female guitarists, I can only think of Fender.

Is that because broads are more susceptible to marketing? :P 

Schnozz

thegummy said:

DulcetJones said:

I can see this, most of the "alternative" bands with girls  that I see are playing Teles and Mustangs.

That is true actually - for all the female guitar players I see these days, I'm struggling to think of many who play any other brand than Fender.

Brittany Howard plays an SG but in the indie rock genre where I've seen the prevalence of female guitarists, I can only think of Fender.

Is that because broads are more susceptible to marketing? :P 

I've just phoned my sisters and they have both confirmed that Teles are shit.

One likes my Les Paul and the other told me to F.O.

AlexC

thegummy said:

DulcetJones said:

I can see this, most of the "alternative" bands with girls  that I see are playing Teles and Mustangs.

That is true actually - for all the female guitar players I see these days, I'm struggling to think of many who play any other brand than Fender.

Brittany Howard plays an SG but in the indie rock genre where I've seen the prevalence of female guitarists, I can only think of Fender.

Is that because broads are more susceptible to marketing? :P 

Joanne Shaw Taylor - Les Paul
Samantha Fish - Gibson SG
PJ Harvey - Firebird
St Vincent - Music Man St Vincent (obviously)
...are a few examples

thegummy

AlexC said:

thegummy said:

DulcetJones said:

I can see this, most of the "alternative" bands with girls  that I see are playing Teles and Mustangs.

That is true actually - for all the female guitar players I see these days, I'm struggling to think of many who play any other brand than Fender.

Brittany Howard plays an SG but in the indie rock genre where I've seen the prevalence of female guitarists, I can only think of Fender.

Is that because broads are more susceptible to marketing? :P 

Joanne Shaw Taylor - Les Paul
Samantha Fish - Gibson SG
PJ Harvey - Firebird
St Vincent - Music Man St Vincent (obviously)
...are a few examples

There will be a few of course but any spare time I get I spend a lot of it watching the KEXP Youtube channel on random which is kind of hip, young bands of varying genres (never dad blues and the likes though) and honestly, for every non-Fender example, I could note dozens of Fender players.

It's not really that much different with males, mind you, it's more of a young hip band thing - the vast majority play not only Fender style guitars but actual Fender branded.

A friend of a friend plays guitar and bass to the level of being on TV fairly regularly (Jools Holland) and played on the radio - he can get any Fender guitar he wants half price because of his status as a mildly famous player - I wonder if that's why it's so prevalent? Would be hard to find a better guitar for half the price of a Fender.

carlos

Fender surveyed "500 aspiring and beginning players from the U.S. and U.K, with a representative mix of gender, ethnicity and age"

DulcetJones

Shrews said:

Anyone seen the actual survey for this? 

I wonder if it changes with age? I've taken it up at the age of 51 and my guitar tutor says his pupils are mainly guys between 30 and 50, who have told their Mrs they would like to play guitar, subsequently given one as a Christmas present, tried to learn it themselves, got stuck, put the guitar away in a cupboard and a few years later decided they really should do something with that strange looking object in the cupboard taking up space and gathering dust.

He has just one woman from 20 pupils on his books and she's only learning it because her son is.

Exactly one half of my current students are female, most of them 15 years old or younger.  I'm in Canada and have always had a high representation of girls versus boys but this year it's higher.  They're not all learning electric specifically but they're learning to play.

Lestratcaster

As a guitar tutor I currently have 3 female learners, all between ages 13-16. They can all play just as well as the guy students who obviously dominate the male-female ratio. I've had my fair share of female learners come in and they are treated the same as a male. Alot of have quit though, which I don't know why. Alot of interest seems to come from Ed Sheeran and the ukulele ot seems, but you still got a lot of female-singer songwriters playing acoustic guitar.

thegummy

Not sure how much you can look at children's music lessons to get an idea of adults actually playing music.

Kind of like taking the popularity of camping from how many kids are joining the scouts or girl guides.