A discordant juxtaposition of business stories over the weekend: Sales are booming at FENDER, as people stuck at home during the pandemic have been buying guitars and other music gear in record numbers. Sales are up 17% year over year and the company is expecting an even bigger 2021. And yet on Saturday, GUITAR CENTER, which dominates the American retail market for the exact same gear, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, suffocating under a mountain of debt. There are understandable business reasons for the two guitar giants' opposite trajectories. As the New York Times notes, Guitar Center had been deeply in debt since long before the pandemic swept the world, dating back to its $1.9 billion acquisition by BAIN CAPITAL in 2007. And though sales had been trending upward before 2020, the company was ill-equipped for the pandemic economy. It lacked the e-commerce presence and know-how of younger companies like SWEETWATER, leaving it especially vulnerable when it had to close most of its stores in March. Fender shuttered its factories and furloughed employees at the same time, but reopened and rehired them a month later as demand began to surge. CEO ANDY MOONEY tells CNBC a "goodwill gesture" to offer Fender's online instructional videos for free to the first 100,000 people who subscribed showed the company how much demand there was. It got those 100,000 subscribers in a day, and nearly a million within three months. At the same time, sales began to spike. The buyers trended young, and a lot of them were women. And while they were buying online from retailers like AMAZON, WALMART and Sweetwater (which is reporting off-the-chart guitar sales this year, too), they were also buying directly from Fender. It's hard, while reading these stories, not to think about the two very different brands. Fender has been a dominant guitar and amplifier brand for over half a century, and players from beginners to Rock and Roll Hall of Famers are fiercely loyal to their Stratocasters and Telecasters, their Deluxe Reverbs and Twins. Mooney tells CNBC that market research suggests 90 percent of the beginners who bought guitars during the pandemic will quit within a year, but the other 10 percent will buy several more; "they have a lifetime value of $10,000." And while they may go into a Guitar Center specifically looking for a Strat or a Tele—beautiful instruments with versatile tones and distinct histories—it's doubtful they'll go into a Guitar Center specifically because it's a Guitar Center. It's never been that kind of brand. It's the big-box brand that at some point set up shop in their town and drove everyone else out; it remains as generic as its name. Given the choice between the five-mile drive to the closest Guitar Center and the 1,500-mile drive to SOUTHPAW GUITARS in Houston, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat. (OK, I have specific needs. But I know plenty of righties who'd make a similar choice. And I'd choose the 15-mile drive to TRUETONE MUSIC in a heartbeat, too, and that means crossing the 405, which is kind of like driving to Houston.) Or I'll go to Sweetwater.com, which is easy to navigate and where I can generally get a salesperson's attention, an actual human salesperson, faster than I can at the Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard. Guitar Center, I should add, expects to be out of bankruptcy protection by the end of the year and it's paying its employees in full in the meantime, which is especially welcome at a time like this. But as a brand, it's hard to not to see how it won't remain vulnerable, even still... TAYLOR SWIFT—who generally plays GIBSONs and, um, TAYLORs, not Fenders—accepted her AMERICAN MUSIC AWARD for Artist of the Year via a taped speech Sunday night. "The reason I'm not there tonight," she said, "is I'm actually re-recording all of my old music in the studio where we originally recorded it... I can't wait for you to hear it." It's possible she also didn't want to be anywhere near a Los Angeles theater that had socially distanced cardboard cutouts of BEYONCÉ, JAY-Z, DOLLY PARTON and a few other celebs in the good seats and socially distanced actual people in the balcony. But that wouldn't be nearly as good a speech. She, too, has a brand, a very good one. The three-hour show was a mix of live and taped performances, and though it wasn't obvious which was which, most seemed taped. SHAWN MENDES started his second of two performances in what looked like a living room but turned out to be a set in the back of the MICROSOFT THEATER. He walked through the living room door mid-song, ran down the aisle and onto the stage. That was a nice touch. And probably pre-taped.