The Rise and Fall of the Piano: 120 Years of Piano Sales

In 1909, American factories shipped 364,545 pianos, a record that still stands. A century ago, half of all American homes had a piano or a player piano. In 1896, more than half of the world's pianos were made in the United States.

The player piano, which played itself from a perforated paper roll, was the gadget of the age. By 1919, player pianos outsold conventional ones, and sales stayed above 300,000 a year into the mid-1920s: 347,589 in 1923.

The fall began before the stock market crash. As amplified radio spread from about 1926, piano and player-piano sales fell sharply in 1927 and 1928. The crash of 1929 ended the player piano's reign.

By 1932, the industry shipped just 27,274 pianos, 7.5% of the 1909 record.

Then something odd happened: from 1931 to 1934, Americans bought more grands than uprights. In 1932, 17,746 grands were shipped against 9,528 uprights. The few buyers who could still afford a piano often chose the best.

During World War II, American instrument makers were barred from building for civilians: iron, copper and brass went to the war effort. Steinway built wooden gliders, and about 2,500 of its sturdy "Victory Verticals" went to the troops in every theater of war. The 1942 figure covers only three months, and there are no figures for 1943 to 1945.

After the war, sales came roaring back: 143,955 pianos in 1947, and more than 200,000 in many of the baby-boom years. The post-war peak came in 1978, at 282,172.

After 1978, sales slid almost every year, to 62,536 in 2007. Uprights took nearly all of the loss, falling from 257,172 to 31,681. Grands held up and even grew, from 20,000 in 1978 to a high of 35,211 in 2005.

So the grand's share kept climbing. In 1958, only 1 new acoustic piano in 45 was a grand. By 2007, it was 2 in 5. The piano went from a household staple to a considered purchase.

Yamaha built Japan's first piano, an upright, in 1900. By 1965 it was making more pianos than any other company in the world, and in 1991 it passed 5 million pianos. Kawai, founded in 1927, built its one-millionth piano in 1978.

Japan's factories made 287,000 pianos in 1985 and 27,300 in 2024. Japan's statistics changed method in 2004 and 2011, and the source doesn't explain the steep drop from 2009 to 2010, so read the line as a trend rather than an exact count.

In 1998, Americans bought about 106,000 acoustic pianos and 74,000 digital ones. Digital pianos pulled ahead around 2004. In 2024, fewer than 18,000 acoustic pianos were sold in the US, against 188,000 digital pianos.

Digital pianos are cheaper, smaller, can be played with headphones and never need tuning. An acoustic piano makes its own sound, from vibrating strings and a wooden soundboard, and a good one can last for generations.

For two decades, China was the piano's great hope. From around 2008, students who passed a certain piano grade could earn 10 extra points on the middle-school entrance exam. In 2017 to 2020, about 400,000 pianos were sold in China every year, and some 40 million people were learning to play.

In 2018, the bonus points were abolished. Pearl River, the world's largest piano maker by its own account, sold 156,100 pianos in 2019 and 70,900 in 2023. Even that low is almost twice what every factory in Japan made in 2023. More than 8 million pianos now stand in Chinese homes.

Germany was once the piano's heartland: in the early 1900s, hundreds of workshops built about 200,000 instruments a year. By the early 1970s it was about 30,000. In 2014, Germany made about 10,000 uprights and 2,500 grands, and about 65% of them were sold abroad.

The great names now build in small numbers, much of it by hand. In the 1920s Steinway sold up to 6,000 pianos a year; in 2015 it finished its 600,000th.

New-piano sales may be a fraction of what they were, but the pianos built in the boom years haven't gone anywhere. Millions still stand in homes, schools and churches, and a well-made piano can last for generations.

If you have one, find out how old it is from its serial number, and add it to our gallery of owners' pianos. If it hasn't been tuned in years, it's probably flat: our free app tells you in a few minutes.