The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has been around for over 70 years. But in the past few, it's entered a lively new phase of business, under the leadership of CEO Andy Mooney.
Fender's iconic electric guitars have been played by legends ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Eric Clapton to Buddy Guy to Bruce Springsteen. The instrument, however, isn't exactly a breeze to learn.
Mooney came to the company in 2015 after successful runs at Nike and the Walt Disney Company and immediately confronted this challenge. In a nutshell, Mooney determined that if Fender could encourage just 10% more beginners to stick with guitar, the industry could grow substantially (the 90% of first-timers that give up never become the longtime customers who spend a lifetime buying equipment).
But Mooney also determined that potential customers were spending four times as much on instruction as gear - and that Fender had an untapped opportunity in women, who made up 50% of new guitar buyers.
Read more: I spent a few months using Fender's online guitar-learning tool - and I was surprised by how much I learnedThis suggested a digital strategy to Mooney and his team, one they're now pursued aggressively with on subscription-based online learning system called Fender Play, launched in 2017 and now with 110,000 paying subscribers, Mooney said in an interview with Business Insider.
On Tuesday, Fender unveiled another online tool, Fender Songs.
"Fender Songs can be downloaded exclusively for iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store with plans for iPad and other platforms in the future," Fender said in a statement.
"Users can sign up at $4.99 per month or a 12-month subscription for $41.99 per year and get 10 percent off guitars, amps and gear on Fender.com and at participating retailers (with a 7-day free trial for both). Fender Songs will improve the player experience at all skill levels by allowing instant access to chords and lyrics to millions of songs, so that users may forge deeper connections with their favorite artists and songs as they continue their musical journey."
Fender Play sought to professionalize the world of online, video-based instruction - which, as anyone who has ever tracked down a tutorial on YouTube knows, can be highly variable in quality. I tested it out a few years back and thought it was generally excellent.
Fender Songs takes matters to the next level. Online, it's easy to find sites that combine a video performance of a song with a walkthrough of that song's chords, enabling someone to play along. But again, quality varies. By creating an app that carries the Fender brand, the company intends to further professionalize this type of ad-hoc song learning.
"People want to play songs!" Mooney said. That night sound like an obvious insight, but in practice, guitar instruction can get bogged down in technique, as any beginner who has been confronted with all the scales in the major keys can attest. Most popular songs, however, are based on simple, repeated chords structures. Figure that out, and in a matter of minutes you can enjoy your guitar rather than struggle with it.
Fender developed an algorithm that can take a streamed song and identify its chords with high accuracy. Millions of song are available, and Fender has made deals with numerous major music publishers to be sure that artists are compensated for their songs. The idea is that a subscriber could learn a song at his or her own pace, following a chord progression and lyrics. They could also record their progress. The app is designed to work with guitars, ukuleles, and pianos or keyboards.
For Mooney, Fender Songs joins Fender Play and two other apps, Fender Tune and Fender Tone (the latter designed to work with Fender's modeling amplifiers), to form a suite of digital tools.
"Fender Songs is next logical product," he said.
But what about selling more Fender guitars and amps?
"Increased engagement should lead to increased sales," he said. "It's good for the hardware side of the business. And we've picked up the pace of product innovation."
All Rights Reserved © 2024
