KERA News - Sales peaked in 1909, when around 365,000 pianos were sold and there were nearly 300 piano manufacturers operating in the U.S., according to The New York Times. Data from the BlueBook of Pianos shows a nosedive in sales after the 1929 stock market crash, a pause during World War II and a relatively steady climb into the early ’70s.
“It’s not just something that was a bit of a status symbol for upwardly mobile families. It was actually a source of entertainment,” said Carol Leone, chair of piano studies at Southern Methodist University...
Radio chipped away at the piano's status as the primary form of home entertainment, and TVs dealt another huge blow. The rise of rock and roll inspired a pivot to guitars, and the debut of electronic keyboards made further cuts into the piano’s primacy.
Retail sales of acoustic pianos fell in the 1980s.
Sales have held steady at around 31,000 a year for the past decade, but in 2024, fewer than 18,000 were sold, according to an industry census conducted by Music Trades.
Upright pianos have been largely replaced by digital pianos. Over 188,000 were sold last year, according to the Music Trades census. Combined, that brought total piano retail sales above 205,000 in 2024. Consider that the population has grown to nearly 342 million today from approximately 92 million in the instrument’s heyday in the early 1900s, according to the U.S. Census, and it’s clear that the proportion of piano buyers is lower today.
“This is a bummer time for the piano industry. It has certainly not been great, and that's even pre-tariff,” said Hannah Beckett, a piano technician and the editor and publisher of Piano Buyer Press.
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