“The one thing that’s making it very hard in the industry – at whatever level – is that there’s just too much choice”: Lee Anderton on guitarists' changing tastes, and why it’s not all doom and gloom for guitar stores

A close up of a rack of Stratocasters in a guitar store.

I don’t for any minute think that the music industry had an easy ride after Covid. There was a huge boom for those who were able to trade online while the shops were closed. But then we had a real slump where there were oversupply issues and probably a false sense of what the demand was likely to be post-pandemic.

But I don’t fundamentally put that down as the reason why we lost a couple of the bigger retailers in 2025. I think you have to lay the majority of that at the door of consumer shopping habits changing, and retailers not responding to those changes. I feel like that is ultimately the reason any retailer fails in the end.