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NAMM 2026: Fender has forged an exclusive global partnership with Samsung to bring its educational Fender Play service to TV screens for the first time.
The online service, designed to guide new players of electric and acoustic guitar, bass, and ukulele through their first chords, riffs, and songs, has proven successful since its 2017 launch. It’s helped encourage the patience and retention that learning an instrument requires, allowing people to learn in their own time and at their own pace, and working through the ranks of skill levels.
Until now, however, Fender’s lesson service has been limited to mobile, tablet, and computer screens, thus necessitating the Samsung collaboration to expand into TV territory. Greater accessibility to the service, then, is a big plus. Although for now, the app is exclusive to Samsung TVs, meaning it's a step, rather than a stride, in the right direction.
“With video-based lessons on Samsung TVs, learning an instrument fits naturally into daily life and helps players reach goals faster,” says Hun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display (VD) Business at Samsung Electronics. “By bringing Fender Play to TVs for the first time, Samsung is turning the largest screen at home into a place to learn and play together.”
This rollout is especially beneficial for Fender Play’s Jam mode. It aims to turn a player’s screen “into a stage,” with a visually alluring background accompanying selectable, specially curated background tracks for putting newly honed skills to the test.
“We are thrilled to bring Fender Play’s immersive learning experience to Samsung TV users, helping guitar enthusiasts take their skills to the next level,” adds Cliff Kim, President of the Fender Play Foundation.
“Our mission has always been to educate and inspire players globally, and this partnership allows music lovers to learn, practice, and play with Fender Play’s high-quality, interactive lessons directly on their Samsung TV.”
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(Image credit: Simon Fellows)
The app is expected to be released in the first half of 2026 and is free to download. Pricing packages for Fender Play subscriptions are currently split between $19.99/£19.49 a month, or $149.99/£144.99 annually for a saving of around $7 per month.
The news marks a bumper couple of weeks for Fender, which recently expanded into the home audio market where it will rival Marshall once more. It also relaunched the Fender-owned PreSonus Studio One DAW as Fender Studio Pro.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
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