For a long time, the piano was one of the first instruments U.S. children learned to play, but in 2025, less people are buying pianos for their homes. "CBS Saturday Morning" discovers why decreased sales might not be a bad thing.

Piano sales in the United States have seen a dramatic decline, falling from around 300,000 units sold annually a century ago to fewer than 18,000 in recent years. Industry experts attribute this trend to a combination of economic factors, changing cultural habits, and the rise of more affordable and compact digital pianos.

Despite the drop in traditional acoustic piano sales, digital pianos are becoming increasingly popular, especially among new learners and families. Experts suggest that digital instruments offer reliable sound and affordability, encouraging continued interest in piano playing. Some in the industry believe this shift may signal an evolution rather than a decline, with the potential for a resurgence in piano music as new generations discover its appeal.

Why plummeting piano sales might be a good thing

From the first simple scales learned as a child. To classical masterpieces that fill a room. The piano has been at center stage and at the center of homes for decades. And Hannah Beckett has heard it all. A piano technician, we joined her on a visit to a client in Northern Virginia. She isolated and nudged each individual string, coaxing just the right tone out of the keys, listening for anything that might be off. Well, I like everything I hear, but. Someone knows how to do their job. People aren't buying pianos for their homes, however, the way they used to. Let's talk about where piano sales are right now. They're rough. That was a big sigh. Yeah, yeah. It's been a hard year. A century ago, piano sales in the U.S. were estimated to be as high as 300,000 a year. In 2024, people bought fewer than 18,000. It's kind of the perfect storm of a lot of geopolitical events, economic status, general trends in the culture. Millennials are struggling to get a house, let alone a piano to put in it. Acoustic pianos are also competing with their smaller and substantially cheaper digital counterparts. It actually feels as if you're playing. It has a heavier feel to it. Chris Silva has been in the piano business at Jordan Kitts Music for 40 years. You still have people that are buying entry-level uprights and entry-level baby grands, but you have many, many more times that number that are buying digital pianos or even hybrid pianos. Do you have a piano at home? Is it like this? Yeah? Digital is what these kids were learning a group lesson the day we visited. Were you tempted at all to go right in and find an acoustic and bring it into the house? No, we were kind of like still in a stage of let's see how much she's really into this, how much she likes it, how committed she is to practicing. And that's where it's not all bad news for the piano. Because at least a digital, you're going to have accurate sounds, accurate notes that the keys are going to go up and down. That's often not the case, Beckett says, with the thousands of old pianos you can find for sale online or even free, most of them worn out and long past their best playing days. Now with digital reliability and affordability, players are sticking with the piano and eventually go shopping for a high quality upgrade. Syllaba says his company sells more than a thousand units a year. A big chunk of those sales are acoustic pianos. So nobody should look at a drop off in piano sales and say, oh, this is the death of an art form. It's just evolving. It's evolving. That's exactly right. We may even be in the prelude of a piano resurgence, Beckett told us. As a new generation grows weary of screens and goes back to Sonatas, an accompaniment for life she and many others can't live without. Beautiful. Could play it all day. For CBS Saturday morning, Jason Allen, Reston, Virginia.

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