I don't know if I can muster up much sympathy for Guitar Center. They're wonderful stores, and the Martin guitar displays in their acoustic guitar section are amazing. But they put a lot of local guitar shops out of business, and changed guitar sales from local business to corporate. I suppose they're similar to what Borders and Barnes & Noble did to local bookstores.

After they put the locals out of business, the corporate stores overextended their credit and built megastores everywhere. And now they're going out of business.

I'm wondering if the corporatization and resulting depersonalization of guitar stores is partly responsible for a reduced interest in music learning. The locally-owned stores were home to budding musicians, and each store was a center of a music community. That's not really possible at a Guitar Center.

-Joe-