i do not want to bash on here, but FenderPlay’s “lessons” are horrific. I got the 90-day free with my guitar - am in Beginner 2 with Justin - and i felt lost and so confused with any lesson/song i attempted on their site. If i had started with Fender’s lessons, no doubt i would have quit immediately.
Same opinion here Karen. I was long into Justin’s course before trying some of Fender’s lessons on a free trial. They just don’t compare at all. Also, my kid brother got a Fender as his first guitar so went straight into their lessons, despite my advice of trying Justin first. (He wanted to “do it properly.”) When his subscription ended he did turn to Justin… and now says that he wishes he had taken my advice right from the start.
I like Fender guitars, but for lessons they just don’t hold a candle to Justin’s courses.
That’s a paid advert right?
A few facts that I found interesting in the Fender CEO interview:
Their study show that 90% of new guitar players will give up playing the guitar within a year. I assumed that the drop out rate was high, but that’s a higher number than I expected. 
Also, another research from them states that the average guitar player spends around 10,000$ in their lifetime on gear. Wow ! GAS is a real thing ! 
Who want to show that research to their wife ?
I was all going fine until the F hit the fan!
$10k seems about right, 6-7 guitars, a few amps etc. On average. Remember Joe Bonamassa is also included in that average
I must be an overachiever. Have definitely spent more than $10k already.
The other perspective I found interesting was his comments on how many women guitar players there are and how male oriented many areas of the industry are. I’m doing my best to help change that wherever possible.
Haha, that’s funny. Yeah, actually 10,000$ sounds quite low to me from a US perspective.
Either way, it is a very cheap hobby on relative terms, compared to so many popular hobbies like skiing, 4x4, you name it. Heck, people spend thousands on a short Disney vacation (we have never been and never will).
That’s Hilarious! Talk about aspirational goals. Guess I better buy a lotto ticket.
I was at an amazing guitar shop a few months back where I played over $100,000 worth of guitars.
For sure an ad but interesting, hadn’t heard of Fender Songs.
I’m not surprised at all that 90% of players drop out in the first year, loads of us here did that the first time around!
I’m not a huge Fender fan, and was disappointed with what they did with the RiffStation software. I bought a copy of it and still use it regularly, but when Fender bought out the RiffStation company, they took the software off the market and it hasn’t surfaced again. I was hoping they might incorporate it into Fender Songs, or maybe they have. Haha.
One of the biggest reasons that I decided to make a second attempt at learning to play guitar was the availability of learning resources. When I bought my first guitar 25 years ago, I tried learning from a book and didn’t last more than six months.
In 2020, I started thinking about trying again. The Fender Play trial offer was one factor in me actually pulling the trigger on buying my Strat. It gave me the confidence that I would be able to learn.
After a couple of months of Fender Play, I went looking for better options and fortunately found Justin Guitar. If I had to rely on Fender, I’m not sure if I would have stuck with it. However, if not for Fender Play, I might never have started in the first place.
I’m super happy to have found Justin Guitar and I am confident that I will continue to learn for as long as I am able.
I’ve had a look at FenderPlay Rob and agree with you. Anything that helps someone into guitar is to be applauded, and it certainly is a useful resource. However Justin’s site and structure of lessons blows Fender out of the water.
76.98% of all statistics are pure nonsense, made up to try and prove the point of whoever is quoting them. 
Who did they ask exactly? Fender customers? Their inferior lessons might be the reason their customers quit. Or perhaps people who have the cash to buy a Fender as their first guitar are more likely to quit because they don’t feel the monetary investment as strongly as those on lower incomes. If the same survey was done on Justin Guitar customers, the results would likely be quite different.
That said, 90% of people quitting wouldn’t surprise me at all. I bought my first guitar and amp from a quitter. In the relatively short time I’ve been playing, I’ve known four other people that decided to learn, yet just one of them is still going. And it’s not just guitar, it’s any hobby that involves learning a new skill over a long period. I’m sure we all know multiple people who have decided to learn music, art, carpentry or whatever and has then quit within the first few months.
In a society based around instant gratification, the average person just doesn’t have the patience for learning new skills as a hobby. It’s easier to just go watch TV instead.
Its still out there and available Tony. Agree totally with what you say, post their buyout.
Plenty of downloads around, just Google peeps.
I remember seeing an interview with Andy Mooney at a show (possibly NAMM) from around when Fender Play had been launched.
IIRC nobody had really done much market research around new players, and they were surprised to find Women/Girls were one of the largest growth markets, but they rarely purchased a guitar in person.
It was quite an interesting interview, as Andy came across as somebody who was actually interested in guitars, wanted to know more about players, and how they could encourage new players (and sell more guitars obviously).
It was pretty much the polar opposite of Gibson at the time, who’s boss didn’t seem interested in guitars, had horrendous QC, were cutting costs, and seemed to think that all players wanted was the latest even more authentic reproduction Les Paul.
What goes around comes around. Les Paul tried for many years to get Gibson to make his electric guitar. He’d built a prototype at epiphone using a 4x4 plank of wood and some off cut hollow body sides (for appearance) + a nightmare of a tremelo bar
Whilst Gibson ignored him a lot he was mates with Leo Fender and Paul Bigsby…
Les ended up going to Epiphone to produce the first Les Paul guitars, Leo obvious started up his own company and so did Paul
The history of the big guitar companies is quite interesting.
I like the fact that Leo couldn’t actually play a guitar. He just designed them, and worked out how to mass produce them.
On average, I dont know how much I have spent, and I am going to spend on music gear.
Making music is seriously expensive man…