Quarantine seems like a pretty good time to sit down and make some music. Though maybe you're not happy with your gear, or you just need more gear, or buying stuff makes you happy. You're alone in thinking that. According to a report from Rolling Stone, the sale of music gear is way up while everyone is in quarantine.
Jim Tuerk, director of business development for online retailer Reverb, said the site is seeing some serious volume lately.
“We are seeing extraordinarily high order volumes, outpacing even the amount of orders we see during the busy holiday season. Several of the music shops that sell gear on Reverb have even told us that March was one of their best months ever…
“Compared to this time last year, searches for music gear are up nearly 50%, with several categories – like ukuleles, MIDI [Musical Instrument Digital Interface] keyboards, and drum machines – seeing search spikes of 100% or more when compared to this time last year.”
Sweetwater CEO Chuck Surack added that the past week saw more sales than the day after Thanksgiving 2019. Y'know, Black Friday. The biggest day for sales. Surack said Sweetwater is getting around 500,000 visitors per day and shipping between 15,000 and 25,000 orders daily.
“We’re getting about 5,000 new customers every day that are buying, and we’re getting about 15,000 people a day who are requesting catalogues and email updates,” says Surack.
I can totally attest to this being real. I just bought a Gretsch G5220 off Reverb. So go read the full report at Rolling Stone and then justify to yourself why maybe you need a new guitar (or three new guitars).
