“Rates are coming back up, rents very rarely go down, and suppliers are in straitened circumstances”: Is crowdfunding the answer to ensuring guitar stores’ survival? One family-run business has launched an innovative campaign to keep its stores alive

Paul McCartney at Hobgoblin London.

Guitar stores are closing at an alarming rate. Sam Ash shut down all of its locations last year. Music Trades reports that the music instrument retail market shrank from $7.5 billion in 2023 to $7.3 billion in 2024. Long-standing British music institutions GAK and PMT closed their shutters within weeks of each other, and Bax Music in the Netherlands and Belgium has also called it a day.

Now, Hobgoblin Music – a family-run business founded in 1976, specializing in acoustic and folk instruments and operating nine shops across the UK – is hoping to defeat the odds and survive with an out-of-the-box crowdfunding campaign.