Best Buy raises curtain on instrument centers

Hoping to cater to everyone from the garage guitarist to the recording artist, Best Buy Co. is announcing plans to set aside store space for an array of musical instruments and gear in dozens of sites nationwide.

The nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer will announce Tuesday that it plans to open as many as 85 music centers inside its stores by the end of the year and could add more locations in the future, executives said.

Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include about 1,000 products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland.

“We’re not just extending the shelf space in the store, we’re creating a designated area specifically for this experience,” said Kevin Balon, the company’s vice president of musical instruments. “And we’re trying to create an authentic and genuine musical instrument store look and feel inside of Best Buy.”

The Richfield, Minn.-based retailer will use its leap into the $8-billion U.S. musical instrument market to carve out new revenue opportunities as sales of CDs and DVDs slow, experts said.

But some observers are cautious about whether the expansion efforts will reap big rewards. “It’s not a high-growth area and it’s obviously going to take up a lot of real estate,” said Morningstar retail analyst Brady Lemos.