50% of New Guitar Players are Now Young Women, According to Fender

Photo by Haley Powers on Unsplash

The days of rock n’ roll being a male sport are long over. Young women now make up 50% of new guitar players.

This exciting new info comes from a study carried out by leading guitar makers Fender. They discovered that both in the UK and the UK, 50% of the market for guitar players starting out were female.

It was only in the 70’s that rock n’ roll icon Joan Jett was told: “girls don’t play electric guitar.”

“Today’s players have grown up in a different cultural context and popular music landscape, and rising artists like Mura Masa, Tash Sultana, Youngr, Daniel Caesar, Grimes, and Ed Sheeran are changing the way the guitar is being used,” Fender CEO Andy Mooney told the Rolling Stone. 

“As a brand, we are committed to creating tools – both physical and digital – that this generation of creators needs for self-expression, now and in the future.”

Mooney continued: “The fact that 50 percent of new guitar buyers in the UK were women was a surprise to the UK team, but it’s identical to what’s happening in the US.

“There was also a belief about what people referred to as the ‘Taylor Swift factor’ maybe making the 50 percent number short-term and aberrational. In fact, it’s not. Taylor has moved on, I think playing less guitar onstage than she has in the past. But young women are still driving 50 percent of new guitar sales.

He added: “So the phenomenon seems like it’s got legs, and it’s happening worldwide.”