> Having everything flow into a Amazon Monopoly of retail isn't great. Even just going in the stores to talk and get a literal feel for instruments is great.
I agree that if sales go to Amazon instead, that's a loss for customers and the community. On the other hand, online retailers can't really compete when it comes to being able to actually try out the exact instrument you're buying. Guitars aren't completely homogeneous; one might sound better than another, or have different wood grain, or whatever.
Also, physical stores can provide guitar setup and repair services. Local setup can help a lot: manufacturers will often set the action very conservatively at the factory because they don't know what kind of humidity conditions the guitar will endure in transit or at its final destination, and they don't want the frets to buzz when someone takes it out of the box. Consequently, the strings are higher than they need to be which makes it unnecessarily hard to play. Fixing that is pretty simple and makes a big difference.
I hope that if Guitar Center closes a lot of their business goes to smaller local music shops for those reasons. However, I expect that if GC is having a hard time, a lot of other music stores are in just as bad of a situation and a lot of them are going to close.
> That said retail, particularly non essential retail ( my various instruments are all effectively toys, I'd guess the working musician to hobbyist ratio to easily be 1:100) is getting hit hard. No one NEEDS a news 1500$ Gibson.
Back around 2007-ish, there was a surge in sales of ukuleles, as a large number of recently-unemployed people with a lot of time on their hands were looking for a cheap hobby. My own anecdote from this last summer was that I made a pond and in early fall went looking for koi to put in it, but a local supplier was sold out and couldn't get more. Apparently there was more demand than has been seen in a long time, which makes sense. If you're stuck at home and need a project, why not make a koi pond?