Fender is best known for making some fantastic guitars, but it’s also very focused on teaching people how to play those wonderful musical instruments to the best of their abilities. It does this through its Fender Play application, which is a video-based learning experience that offers instructional guides on how to play not just the guitar, but also the bass and the ukulele.
The Fender Play app has been available on smartphones, tablets and even computers for some time already, but now it’s finally making its big-screen debut as a native app on Samsung’s Tizen-powered TVs.
The company has just announced an “exclusive global partnership” that will give Samsung first dibs among television brands on the Fender Play app. It's going to launch later this year, and though we don’t know the exact day, Samsung promised it will arrive in the first half of the year, which means it might also be available on its new 2026 TVs from the day they go on sale.
Fender Play will launch on Samsung TVs in all major markets, with the company saying it’ll come to 49 countries initially, including the U.S., the U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. What’s interesting is that the company isn’t promising to launch a ported version of the mobile app, but rather, one that has been natively redesigned for the TV big screen, featuring a novel “Jam Mode” that takes full advantage of Samsung’s video processing and Dolby Atmos audio capabilities.
The app is highly rated by musicians, with Musicradar giving it a four and a half stars rating out of five, making it one of the top-ranked guitar learning apps around, and the fact it’s coming to TVs will give it a significant edge over rival applications that are limited to smaller displays.
The big screen promises to be advantageous for learners, primarily because it’ll be much easier to see what’s going on, where you need to place your fingers etc. The app experience is also very well structured, starting out with very simple lessons that progressively become more difficult as the user goes on. It’s far smoother than trying to find suitable lessons on a platform like YouTube, for instance, so learners can hope to progress faster.
That’s an important benefit, because Fender says as many as 90% of people who attempt to learn to play the guitar give up within the first 12 months, long before they’re able to master it. This reality is precisely why Fender made Fender Play in the first place, because if it can get more people to stick with it and become talented enough, that’s going to help it sell a lot more guitars. Indeed, Fender Chief Executive Andy Mooney, who will step down next month, said in an interview with Musicradar some years ago that if Fender Play can "reduce the abandonment rate by just 10%, we could double the size of the [guitar] industry."
However, that comment does make us wonder why Fender has decided to monetise the Fender Play app. Learners beware, the app is not entirely free, with users asked to pay £19.49 per month to access all of the lessons and features it offers. With any luck, Samsung may yet offer users a discount on that price when the app launches on its TVs.
