The recording industry may seem to be in freefall (it’s really all just smoke-and-mirrors, folks), but regardless of the prospect of shrinking CD sales, there seems to be no end to the musically-minded jumping into the fray. Music instrument retailer Guitar Center, a California-based chain of 200+ retail stores and two online ecommerce sites, recently reported its first quarter sales and the numbers, to say the least, are encouraging.

Reporting net sales of $534.5 million, up 13.5% from Q1 2006, Guitar Center cites $17.2 million net income for the period, up 9.55% from last year. Although the company’s “same store” sales were about even (>1%), Guitar Center opened twelve news stores during the quarter and continues to expand into new markets. Sales on both the company’s Guitar Center and Musician’s Friend web sites continue to be strong, and overall the company projects annual sales this year to exceed $2.3 billion.

Why is this good news? There are basically two types of people into music: those that play it, and those that buy it, and the two types are not mutually exclusive. With more people interested in playing music, and with the “means of production” decreasing in cost, it’s easier than ever to create music. C’mon, a really nice Epiphone guitar goes for as low as $200, a decent microphone can be had for $100 and an M-Audio FastTrack, which allows you to record straight to your computer’s hard drive, goes for around $125 – wowee zowee – instant recording studio!

The more people that get into playing music, the better the odds we have of producing a new John Lennon, Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain. Fanciful thinking, maybe, but this is very reassuring from my point-of-view. Looks like we’ll have lots of new music to listen to for years to come....