JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Piano sales have decline drastically...

Just read an article about many piano based music stores closing. In 1909 364,500 were sold in the US. Compared to recently, only 30,000 pianos were sold. One reason why sales have dropped in the article:

"Computer technology has just changed everything about what kids are interested in," said Fine, who also publishes a website offering consumer information on new and used pianos. "People are interested in things that don't take much effort, so the idea of sitting and playing an hour a day to learn piano is not what kids want to do."

This is sad for the next generations to come. It's starting to appear we're headed towards an instant gratification society.

Not a good outlook for future piano teachers.

John

Well it's kind of how I feel about guitars and drums and amplication and real ambience being gone in exchange for convenience and quiet recordings.

And im sure you as a piano player know that you can never emulate a real piano electronically, but it can sound really good in it;s own right.

I learned the piano I know from playing at a friends house. Or from playing the keyboard players keys when the gear was at my place.

But piano is a percussive instrument, just have to listen to Billy Joels stuff to hear that, it's not the same thing, the physically banging of the keys just like the touch of a drum kit can never be perfectly matched.

Yeah, thats how it is now

Those were the days when all the family gathered around the piano-wishing somebody could play it!
Sad really nearly every home had one.I'd like one too but my flat is hardly big enough to support my guitar.

I wonder if that number includes electronic keyboards? Anyone can afford and store a small Yamaha keyboard and learn to play. And they weigh 15 lbs instead of 400!

But they are right....you can't give away a piano around here.

Pianos are good ------ too bad

I suppose that a lot of the piano sales are going to electronic keyboards

1. One of the reasons may be todays lifestyle of constant moving about. Pianos cost a lot of money to move. Sometimes more than the piano itself cost.

2. Electric pianos today with their weighted keys and being touch sensitive are a viable alternative. They also sound pretty good.

3. I don't think most people realize how reasonable a spinet piano costs. Often on par with a guitar.

That said my mom was a concert/jazz pianist and my first piano lessons were on a Steinway baby grand and my first organ lessons were on a Hammond C3. Even with that I picked a guitar as my instrument of choice.

Hi John, et al:

This decline has been happening for quite some time. Our piano did not make the move from Nashville... and I was almost as glad to see it go (heavy lifting) as the day we sold my daughter's horse. (Guess who eventually got to feed and water old Diamente Gold?)

I'm hoping the rise of a plethora of different kinds of keyboards will end up being a boon to piano teachers if they can overcome the loss of fixed pedals near the floor... LOL! IMHO, a keyboard, whether afixed to a real piano or a plastic case filled with electronics, etc. will still allow those nimble little fingers an opportunity to learn.

I know, it isn't the same and those delicious chords soaring from the sound box and an open lid are such a delight. The key weight and feel thing is another factor most keyboards cannot emulate... but there are a few.

When visiting my daughter in the Austin area... there were several big box piano stores in that city a few years ago and the trend John has brought up is evident by their ever-shrinking number. I'm sad to know that pianos, like me, are becoming "dinosaurs."

A trip to Fort Worth and the Van Cliburn Competition will surely reinforce the fact that, although in decline, the piano will be around until WWIII and beyond.

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Dave

My mother had a player-piano that we had to move out when she went to the care home(she has Alzheimer's). The player doesn't work anymore. Fortunately, my niece was able to take it when she and her husband moved into their first home. It was such a hassle moving it. It took about six of us adult men. I don't see this piano ever being sold because frankly, it would be giant headache to move it. The cherry wood and ivory keys mean nothing to most in a throw away society.And even though I play keyboard, I wouldn't want it because it's an albatross. So you won't see Archie and Edith singing together by the piano in our house.

saw the article on the news last night....

They were pushing the idea that kids didn't want to learn to play as much ...but what about the idea that less parents are forcing their children to take lessons?
plus there are so many other things sports...college prep...etc) that parents are signing their kids up for...

I know in my case, when they were clearing out my grandmother's house, I made it known that I didn't want her grand (would have actually loved it) because there really was no room in my house ((and a move a year later into married student housing only re-enforced my decision) and when I finally went looking for a keyboard.... the space was still small and I opted for a small cheap keyboard that came with headphones.
Would I like a piano now? sure... but a good one is really not in the budget....(which is also why, when I was teaching piano, I would go to my students' houses for their lessons.

It's what I said in a different thread, kids buy pro tools and recording gear before they learn an instrument.

Playing a big piano is not as "cool" and plugging a usb keyboard into your laptop, but i wonder how many kids doing this can play with both hands and use the foot pedal properly.

Maybe it's good in a way, everybody can enjoy expressing themselves through music, but it seems the emphasis is on writing and not performing.

And when kids learn rock band or guitar hero before they learn an instrument something is wrong too.

but, well have to see what the next 50 years brings with it. this stuff tends to go in cycles so maybe in 50 years it will be back to doo wop and live perfomances

I think another reason for the decline is that if you want one, you will likely get one word of mouth from a friend of a friend who will only have you pay to move theirs

It is the way we got one 15 or so years ago, and it will likely be the way we pass it on.

Treat it well and it lasts a long time.

That's a shame, John.
I have a baby grand, which is a family heirloom, and it adds something to the house to have a piano, I think!

Perhaps one reason for the decline is that people move much more than they used to. No one wants to think about eventually moving a piano!

It seems that some enterprising person could invent a piano that can be taken apart and reassembled!?!

My home was built in 1918 and there was an old boiler down in the cellar for years. I called a couple of moving companies ... and no one could budge it.

One day, I called a scrap metal guy to pick up another item, and showed him the boiler too. He was a skinny guy, in his 70s. The next thing I knew ... he had taken the boiler apart and carried each of the pieces out, easily! It was amazing ... the thing did NOT look like it could come apart!

Interesting replies...

Electric pianos are fine if parents purchased quality ones. When I was teaching some students came with 32 key Wal-Mart Casio’s (with smaller keys than standard pianos). Though music appreciation, chords and theory can be taught on such instruments, piano playing can't. A good 88 weighted-key electric piano would be in the $2,000 range. I doubt most parents would consider that price. Anything less in a keyboard would just be discouraging to the student that actually wanted to play piano.

My opinion on electric pianos… good for recordings (since all recordings are electrical anyway, including acoustic piano recordings), but give me the real thing for playing “live”.

Jeez, I can be such a snob...

John

I get my engineers right on your idea Lisa! Sounds like a good plan.

John

They do make a piano dolly that the stores use to move around. It's like a cart that you put under the piano with straps that you wrap around. Once you get it secure and strapped up you're good to go. One person can move it around.

I had a 1916 Washburn upright that was given to me. I had a music store owner friend who loaned me his dolly to move it around. I don't know how the dolly works on a grand. This piano was painted an ugly white so I thought I would try to restore it. I stripped off the paint and put a dark walnut stain on it and a finish. I took off the old ebony and ivory keys and replaced them with plastic (that's what they use now). I gave the old keys to a woodworker friend to use as inlay. The piano looked beautiful. Only problem was it didn't play. While I was taking it apart, I removed the action piece to replace springs and felt. I actually got in over my head. I tried to seat it back in and couldn't do it. It takes an expert to work on the action. Nevertheless it sat at my parents house for over ten years just looking pretty.

Later on my brother moved in and brought some furniture over that was infested with termites. By the time I was ready to work on it some more all the wood was eaten up so I had to burn it. I had to call someone with a claw truck to pick up the cast iron harp and haul it away.

It's the physicality of being at the piano that makes it more exciting, like a drummer sitting behind his drum kit and being surrounded by drums.

With software none of that exists, we sit at a laptop

It's the physicality of being at the piano that makes it more exciting, like a drummer sitting behind his drum kit and being surrounded by drums.

With software none of that exists, we sit at a laptop - Bugsey

This article says it better than I can: http://campus.murraystate.edu/staff/scott.thile/digital_vs_real.html

That being said both acoustic piano and electric piano become closer in the recording realm.

John

Hi John and everyone!

I tuned pianos for 35 years as my main job. I restored and even rebuilt them for a while until we went to Kuwait. BOO! The phones for rebuilds and even the lower cost restoring STOPPED ringing the very day CNN went full time talking about Kuwait and the recession it would most likely bring. BOO again!

I saw the modern day boom and bust, with the boom being in the 70's around here, (Philly-Jersey-NY area), to the bust starting in '92, (Kuwait). My tunings went down starting in '92, besides the rebuilds and restorations being NO More. My wife and I choose to sell our home and self built-(with my dad and one neighbor)-shop, to avoid bankruptcy.

While in our rental place to live for four years, I drove a truck, and used my van that WAS a piano service van for courier service jobs. That ran my van into the ground, and I watched it be towed on a flatbed. I left that job the minute it went out of my sight down the street.

I once had a most successful piano tuning business, and tuned for many pro players, in their homes, and in concert venues. Russian ones too. Picky, picky, picky! Ha!

I first had a spinet when I was 12, when I took it over from my mom who had it given to her by my dad for her birthday gift. She soon let me be on all the time, when not playing drums or guitar. I got an old upright when I was 20, and even played another upright in one band for a year. OUCH! Heavy things, those uprights!

I saw many kids play piano through my years of tuning them. People were buying all styles of pianos like they were bread throughout the 70's and even the 80's. I had to go out on moves to help when first learning how to tune and repair, (1976).

I LOVE pianos!!!!! Like real drums as Bugsy mentioned, there is something so different and GREAT about sitting at one. Percussive for sure. I can sorta play the same way on the fakes, but there IS a difference in HOW the sound influences exactly HOW I play. Like being on real drums, where there are so much more dramatics to be expressed and experienced. Our ears have gotten used to sterile music. Sterile percussion in pop and other songs. Sterile piano sounds in tune with perfect pitch singers using pitch control. It is like we NEED sterile perfection more than unique instruments and their players.

I am part of the problem, *BUT not in a public way, as only you guys and a few others know about my playing and songs.

I still have my old upright! Tinnitus keeps me off of it a lot more than not though, (four years so far with this condition).

I still have my real drums too, (1965 Rogers - the Holiday model.

I still have my wife too, (my second actually though). Ha!

I will have to play my upright tomorrow, just for that old time, non perfect, very expressive feel and sound! That plate! That soundboard! Those ivories, thanks to some elephant before 1920.

Those same strings too! Pianos?! LIKE the Brooklyn Bridge! Try playing a 1920 guitar with it's strings not changed since 1920, and feel and hear it. Then play my upright! WOW! Such a great, punchy, full, expressive experience it is to play and hear my upright! Original everything but the bridal straps! Ha!

Lets give a BIG Hooray for The Piano!!!!! And to it's makers,
and to the regarded inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori!

HOORAY!!!!

ANYONE: Play one in some store soon if not having one. Ask for a tuned one.

Apartment dwellers on here would not be as likely to have a piano in their apartment.
I wanted a Hammond much like my parents had before I purchased a synth.
I can barely get away with racket with my hand made drums and percussions. Although one or two neghbors might like them at a picknick.

There should be that unmovable piano near every park bench, but the vandels would in no time get at it.
Hopefully they would try a song.

Yes, the piano is a percussive instrument… and a melodic, harmonic, dynamic (pianoforte) one. It’s an orchestra under one’s fingers.



John

Cant Imagine Roy Bittan on An electric Piano, this song wouldnt have been the same. How does this song not take you somewhere?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EooiBaW1BA

What a genius this guy is, he did all the work on Meatloafs albums too

That was David Sancious.

Well!,
I guess it's a good thing Floyd Cramer and Vladimir Horowitz got their piano playing in when it counted! No doubt piano's are going the way of the LP Record even tho some are still releasing new music on the LP.

So what Johnny's saying is sadly true...

When war came, the music stopped!

(And for some reason, I'm laughing about Ben's musical disasters...)

I hope Ben at the very least roasted some marshmallows on the bonfire.

John

Well Lisa and John, I stripped down all the wood and burned that. The action was made of wood and felt with a strip or two of metal, so I burned that. Being a pack rat, I saved the old screws and the wheels, or casters. I still have them. That's all that's left of my piano.

Your right, but I had the wrong link. One right below it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-IZWISZ8CY

but i should have credited "Davey" too

And meatloafs bat out of hell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9hLcRU5wE4

More Roy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PTJHhUeAfc

It really is a pity! I'm 100% on the same page as you John even though we're generations apart. I can imagine that the piano sale drops and will keep droping because nobody wants to learn playing the piano. I was trained playing the piano classically when I was a child. Well, I was a child about 15 years ago, and even during that time none of my friends played piano. Some started for a month or two and then dropped it again. My parents made sure that I continue. Of course some days I would have rather played ball in the sun instead of getting lessons playing Mozart from that veeeeery old lady who was my teacher back then (she was so old, I think she knew Mozart personally lol). But, now looking back I'm thankful that I was pushed to continue and my parents agreed to pay for lessons and a REAL piano because without those lessons, I wouldn't be where I am today with my business and my music.
I guess today it's much cooler to learn how to use Fruity Loops first before learning a REAL instrument.

I wonder what the total sales of all keyboards are compared to pianos

Pianos will not disappear, but I would think that the market is definitely not yet shrunk as far as it will go....for many of the reasons cited.

But because it it a unique musical instrument they will still be made, perhaps by a only handful of skilled craftsmen, but they will definitely be made.

That a market grows and shrinks in the face of changing tastes, consumer preferences and the growing presence of alternatives is normal. But very little that is unique, useful or desirable actually disappears...it just becomes more scarce.

I have a friend who answered a Craigslist ad by an elderly woman who was selling her Yamaha Grand Piano for $10,000.

My friend is an exceptional pianist, vocalist, songwriter and producer.

When he got to her house, he sat down at her piano and played her a song he'd written.
She cried as he performed his song and when he finished she said:

"You may have my piano for free. Please accept it as my gift to you."

WOW! $10,000.00 for playing one song. That was a well paying gig.