If you’re weighing whether to start guitar lessons, or wondering why the guitar in the closet never quite took hold, the data tells a clear story. Millions of people pick up a guitar every year, and it beats almost every other instrument for sheer beginner interest. But guitar also has one of the roughest survival rates around: most people who start never make it to their second year. This page is part of our full Music Education Research hub, and it pulls together verified enrollment, age, and retention data specific to guitar – what actually happens after someone decides to learn.
How Many People Are Actually Learning Guitar Right Now
A 2021 survey commissioned by Fender and conducted by YouGov, covering 10,644 respondents across the United States, found that 7 percent of Americans ages 13 to 64 – about 16 million people – had started learning guitar in the previous two years. That’s a striking number for a single instrument. Sixty-two percent of these new players said COVID-19 lockdowns were a major reason they picked it up, which lines up with what many teaching studios saw firsthand: people with sudden free time reached for something they’d always meant to learn.
The same survey found that 53 percent of beginners practice two hours or less per week, even though most respondents believed it takes roughly four hours a week for one to two years to “get good.” That gap between stated goals and actual practice time explains a lot of what follows in this article.
Who Starts Guitar, and at What Age
Guitar skews young, but not as young as you might expect. In the same 2021 Fender study, 72 percent of new guitar players were between 13 and 34 years old. That’s a wide band – it covers early teens picking up their first guitar and adults in their late twenties starting from scratch.
Gender is closer to even than the old stereotype suggests. Fender’s 2018 research report, “Illuminating the State of Today’s Guitar Players,” produced with Egg Strategy and researcher Daniel Levitin across the US and UK, found that women made up 50 percent of beginner and aspirational guitar players. The same report found that 72 percent of new players started guitar “to gain a life skill or as a means of self-betterment,” while 61 percent wanted to learn songs to play alone or socially.
For younger children, the UK’s ABRSM “Making Music” report – a 2014 survey of 1,726 children ages 5 to 17 – found the average starting age for any instrument was 7.6 years old, and that children who later stopped playing had typically done so by age 11.1. Guitar generally needs more finger strength and hand span than piano or recorder, so it tends to start a little later in most teaching studios. That’s part of why ABC Academy opens private guitar lessons at age 5 and up rather than in early childhood.
Acoustic or Electric: What Beginners Are Actually Playing
Among UK children who play an instrument, ABRSM’s research found classical or acoustic guitar was the fourth most commonly played instrument at 20 percent, ahead of electric guitar at 13 percent, which ranked sixth. Acoustic and classical guitar clearly outpace electric guitar as a first instrument for children.
That acoustic lean shows up in industry data too. According to NAMM’s 2025 Global Report, fretted instruments – guitars, banjos, and similar instruments – grew 38 percent in the US market over the past decade, the strongest-performing product category NAMM tracks. The same report found that acoustic guitar unit sales rose across several markets in 2024, including Canada, Australia, and Brazil, with growth “primarily driven by younger musicians purchasing beginner-level instruments.” Electric guitar has its own pull, of course – guitar effects pedals alone brought in nearly $200 million in US retail sales in 2024, according to the same NAMM report, which says something about how many electric players keep spending well past their first year.
If you’re deciding between the two for a first guitar, our Acoustic Guitar and Electric Guitar pages walk through what each involves at ABC Academy, including typical starting ages and gear.
Where Guitar Ranks Against Other Instruments
Guitar is popular, but it isn’t the single most-played instrument among children, at least according to ABRSM’s UK data. Keyboard led at 30 percent, followed by piano at 28 percent and recorder, also at 28 percent. Classical guitar came in fourth at 20 percent. Part of the reason is access: keyboard and recorder are cheap and common in school classrooms, while guitar is more often a family or private-lesson choice.
Where guitar stands out is in how it’s learned. ABRSM’s teacher survey of 4,491 UK instrumental and singing teachers found that only 7 percent taught (acoustic or classical) guitar and 6 percent taught electric guitar, compared with 67 percent who taught piano. And among children who play an instrument, only 79 percent of classical guitar players had ever taken a formal lesson, and just 76 percent of electric or bass guitar players had, compared with 91 percent of string players and 83 percent of piano players. Guitar is one of the instruments people are most likely to teach themselves, at least partway, before ever sitting down with a teacher.
Why Most Beginners Quit – and What Changes That
This is the number that should give any beginner pause. In a 2019 interview with MusicRadar, Fender CEO Andy Mooney said that of the guitars Fender sells to first-time players each year – about 45 percent of its total sales – roughly 90 percent of those new players abandon the instrument within their first year. Mooney called it an industry-wide retention problem, not an interest problem: people keep buying guitars, they just don’t keep playing them.
Fender’s own 2021 landscape study backs this up from another angle. Twenty-five percent of the 16 million new players surveyed said they had stagnated in their progress, not improving despite still owning the instrument. Combined with the earlier practice-time finding – just two hours a week or less for over half of beginners – a pattern emerges: guitar is easy to start and hard to sustain without structure.
One factor seems to matter here: how people learn in the first place. Fender’s 2018 research found that beginners ranked online, video-based tutorials as the most effective resource for learning guitar, ahead of private lessons. That doesn’t mean lessons don’t work; it means most beginners try to teach themselves first, often without the feedback that catches bad habits early. A weekly lesson with a teacher who adjusts technique in real time addresses exactly the gap that self-taught practice tends to miss.
Frequently Asked Questions
What age should my child start guitar lessons?
Most teaching studios, including ABC Academy, open private guitar lessons at age 5, once a child has enough hand strength and finger span to manage a properly sized instrument. ABRSM’s research puts the average starting age for any instrument at 7.6, so starting guitar at 5 or 6 puts a child ahead of that average, not behind it.
Is acoustic or electric guitar easier for a beginner?
There’s no verified research establishing one as objectively easier, so we won’t claim otherwise. What the data does show is that beginners lean toward acoustic and classical guitar first: ABRSM found classical guitar was played by 20 percent of UK children who play an instrument, compared with 13 percent for electric guitar. Talk to a teacher about hand size, interest in specific music styles, and whether an amp fits your home before choosing.
How many guitar students actually stick with it?
According to Fender CEO Andy Mooney, about 90 percent of first-time guitar buyers quit within their first year. That statistic describes casual, often self-taught buyers broadly, not students enrolled in structured lessons specifically, but it’s still a strong argument for building consistent practice habits and getting feedback early, which is exactly what weekly lessons are designed to do.
Do more people play guitar or piano?
In ABRSM’s UK survey of children who play an instrument, keyboard (30 percent) and piano (28 percent) both edged out classical guitar (20 percent). Guitar remains one of the most popular instruments overall, just not the single most common first choice among children specifically.
Guitar Lessons at ABC Academy
At ABC Academy of Music, guitar sits inside our Private Lessons program, open to students age 5 and up alongside piano, voice, drums, and ukulele. If your child is younger than that, our Rhythm Kids classes (ages 4 to 7) build the rhythm and listening skills that make picking up an instrument easier later, and our Music Together (R) program (ages 0 to 3) does the same groundwork even earlier. Music Together is a registered trademark of Music Together LLC. ABC Academy of Music is an authorized Music Together center.
We teach guitar out of our Lawrence Park, St. Clair West, and Dufferin Grove/Oakwood studios in Toronto, plus our Brampton location. You can browse our full classes lineup, check current rates and payment options, or contact us to set up a first lesson. Given how many beginners stall out without structure, a regular weekly lesson with feedback is one of the more reliable ways to be in the minority that keeps playing past year one.
SOURCES:
- Fender, “16 Million Americans Learned to Play Guitar in the Last Two Years, Why and Who Are They?” (New Guitar Player Landscape Analysis, YouGov survey of 10,644 respondents, May-June 2021), PR Newswire, 2021, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/16-million-americans-learned-to-play-guitar-in-the-last-two-years-why-and-who-are-they-301394808.html
- Fender, with Egg Strategy and Daniel Levitin, “Illuminating the State of Today’s Guitar Players,” as reported by Guitar Girl Magazine, 2018, https://guitargirlmag.com/interviews/girls-with-guitars-continue-to-rise-fender-study-reveals-women-continue-to-account-for-50-of-emerging-guitar-market/
- Andy Mooney (Fender CEO), interview, “90% of beginner guitar players give up within a year, says Fender,” MusicRadar, 2019, https://www.musicradar.com/news/90-of-beginner-guitar-players-give-up-within-a-year-says-fender
- NAMM, “Industry Insights: Key Takeaways From the 2025 Global Report,” NAMM.org, 2025, https://www.namm.org/blog/industry-insights-key-takeaways-2025-global-report
- ABRSM, Critical Research, “Making Music: Teaching, Learning and Playing in the UK,” ABRSM, September 2014, https://www.musicmark.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014_making_music.pdf