“Pop culture is inspiring Britons of all ages to rediscover the joy of music”: New study names the electric guitar as the UK’s most popular instrument of 2024 – and it’s because of a Netflix show from 2 years ago

A study conducted by two music gear specialists has named the electric guitar as the UK’s most popular instrument of 2024 – and has ascribed credit to a Netflix TV show from two years ago for the results.

Gear4Music and Moombix (via Daily Mail) both crunched the numbers from the past 12 months in an effort to discover which instrument had proven to be the biggest seller of the year, and the electric guitar came out on top.

It was followed by the keyboard – the only non-stringed instrument to make it in the top five – with the acoustic guitar, classical guitar and ukulele all following suit.

It’s a list that clearly showcases some level of dominance from guitar and guitar offshoots in the 2024 sale stats, with the likes of bass guitars, drums, orchestral gear and more all missing out.

To that end, Gear4Music and Moombix both observed that the kazoo, bassoon, bagpipes, tenor horn and oboe were all deemed the least popular instruments of the year.

Of course, we’d hardly expect any of the above – or any traditional orchestral instrument – to come anywhere close to the electric guitar, especially when one considers recent sales stats for electric guitars.

After all, it was only a few years ago that Fender was reporting that 16 million people had picked up the guitar over the pandemic.

However, in their study, Gear4Music and Moombix both speculated that the stronghold of the electric guitar in 2024 was partially a result of Stranger Things Season 4 – an instalment to the hugely popular Netflix show that arrived back in 2022.

In that series, fan favorite character Eddie Munson – portrayed by Joseph Quinn – played a B.C. Rich Warlock in the Upside Down and shredded Metallica’s Master of Puppets while being swarmed by an army of Demobats.

It was one of the guitar world’s biggest stories of 2022 – there was much speculation surrounding what Quinn was actually playing before the show actually dropped, B.C. Rich released an actual Stranger Things Warlock model, and Metallica even voiced their approval of the scene – but to suggest the guitar is still healthy in 2024 because of this phenomenon might seem a somewhat delayed reaction.

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Having said that, Gear4Music did also report a huge jump in demand for black cellos, which was theorized to have been caused by Wednesday – another Netflix show from 2022 in which (you guessed it) a black cello is played by the main character.

We struggle to see any other reason why such an obscure instrument would be in such high demand in 2024, so perhaps the Netflix theory holds some water, even after all this time.

“Pop culture is inspiring Britons of all ages to rediscover the joy of music learning,” asserts Moombix founder, Margret Juliana Sigurdardottir, “with TV shows, movies, as well as a burgeoning electronic music scene driving the popularity of certain instruments.”

For more in-depth detail in about guitar gear sales from 2024, check out Reverb’s own report on the best-selling electric guitars and best-selling guitar pedals of the past 12 months.