Best Buy For Rock Stars: Retailer To Sell Musical Instruments

For customers ready to graduate from the Rock Band video game to the real thing, Best Buy is now selling musical instruments.

Best Buy plans to open 75 to 85 music centers inside its retail stores by the end of the year, according to a spokesperson at the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer. Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include about 1,000 different musical instruments and other products from vendors such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland, according to the company.

The music centers will have their own dedicated space, complete with demo rooms, akin to the company's Magnolia Home Theatre centers within Best Buy's retail locations, said the spokesman. The retailer will carry more rock-and-roll oriented equipment, such as guitars, bass guitars, keyboards, DJ equipment, recording devices and more, the spokesman said.

Already a top retailer for music CDs, DVDs and stereo equipment, Best Buy hopes to leverage that strength in the instruments market. "A lot of it sparks from what customers told us. We tried it in a couple stores in [Los Angeles] and we got first info from that," the spokesman said.

Currently, Best Buy has three music centers in Los Angeles, two in Minnesota, two in Chicago and one in the Washington, D.C., area. The other stores are expected to open before the end of the calendar year, said the spokesman.

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