Contrary to what many feel, the piano is actually alive and tinkling. Here we take a look at the top reasons why the piano is such a popular instrument.
Declining Piano Sales but People Are Still Learning Piano
At the peak of piano sales, in the early 20th century, more than 360,000 pianos were bought every year. A fraction of it now gets sold.
The sales of these acoustic instruments have been declining for years, because:
- The cost of pianos is high (Grand piano can cost anywhere up to $100,000)
- Buyers are preferring the smaller, cheaper digital keyboard (easily fits in most apartments nowadays)
Interestingly, while the sale of the bigger pianos have gone down, more people are learning to play the piano.
It means the audience is there, its just that piano manufacturers/stores need to figure out how to market the pianos to them.
Whether its buying a piano for the next piano prodigy (someone who has started taking lessons, and is doing really well) or simply looking to upgrade, music stores have to target more such buyers.
The Keyboard is Still the ‘King of all Instruments’
For die-hard piano fans, the keyboard instrument is the ‘king among all instruments’ (some even call it the ‘mother’instrument). Some of the greatest and most loved music of the world has been written for the piano.
It’s an orchestra by itself encompassing both melody, harmony and rhythm with a range of seven octaves and more. No other instrument can match this. As a composer, the piano helps you cover the entire spectrum of the orchestra, all the octaves are visible, so it makes piano the best instrument for composition and arrangement.
Read: Here’s why piano is so important to music studies.
The piano shares its history with classical, jazz and modern music and is one of the popular instruments used for composition, along with its modern version known as the keyboard that is commonly used for music production.
Despite its history, the piano is very modern age, and is used by big performers / artistes across the board around the world.
The music keyboard may be popular with beginner music students but that is because of practical and economic reasons; electronic keyboards are also widely used in the music industry primarily because of space restrictions in the smaller studios (they do use lot of piano libraries (sounds) for their music production though).
However, the piano is vastly different in look, feel and output, and that is why a lot of musicians prefer to uses a real acoustic piano for their recordings. It also looks quite inspiring, be it in the music classroom or in the recording studio).
Why piano-mania grips China’s children
Music Stores Trying to Boost Piano Sales
While the electronic keyboard, and musical keyboards for kids are still popular items, music stores are trying to come up with several innovative methods to boost the sale of pianos, which has taken a hit in recent years.
Here are a couple of innovative ideas that piano manufacturers and piano stores have come up with, in order to boost piano sales:
Introducing Newer Technologies
To attract a new audience, piano manufacturers are trying to bring their centuries old work, into the 21st century by adding latest technologies to their pianos.
For example, Steinway is trying to revitalize the piano buying industry, using Bluetooth and iPad.
Several pianos now also act as an automatic player piano that allows you to choose from hundreds of songs on an app, once selected, you can watch the piano play the song as if the pianist was there.
Annual Piano Sales in Music Schools/Colleges
And one of the ways is to tie up with a music school/college to host a piano sale, as Pianos are the perfect fit for any music school.
The college has lots of potential buyers which the music stores can target, and in return the college’s music department gets a small fee (portion of the proceeds) for hosting the event.
The goal of such events is to spark another generation of music lovers. Buyers can avail of great discounts on electric keyboards as well as on $100,000 dollar Grand Pianos.
KeytarHQ editorial team includes musicians who write and review products for pianists, keyboardists, guitarists & other musicians. KeytarHQ is the best online resource for information on keyboards, pianos, synths, keytars, guitars and music gear for musicians of all abilities, ages and interests.
Leave a Reply