Piano and Music Videos

I’m Robert Estrin, and today we have an intriguing question: Why can’t you buy a piano online? You might think it’s odd coming from me, given that Living Pianos was the world’s first online piano store, started in 2006. However, for the most part, you really can’t buy a piano online. Let me explain.

Practical Challenges

First, there are practical challenges. How do you ship a piano if you buy one online? If you live in Florida and buy a piano from California, how do you get it there? Who will tune it? These practicalities are significant, but there’s more to it.

Protected Territories in the Piano Industry

The piano industry still operates on an old business model of protected territories. This means you can’t shop for pianos the same way you shop for other items online. For most products, you can easily compare prices and buy from the cheapest source. But with pianos, the agreement between manufacturers, distributors, and dealers limits sales to specific geographical areas.

Unique Aspects of Pianos

Every piano is unique, which adds another layer of complexity. The agreements between manufacturers and dealers mean that dealers can only sell within their designated areas. If you visit a store, they can sell to you, but they can’t quote prices over the phone for out-of-area customers.

Exceptions and Loopholes

There are exceptions. Some large dealers skirt the rules and sell out of their designated areas. If caught, they may have to pay a commission to the local dealer. However, as long as the dealer is significant enough, manufacturers often look the other way.

The Living Pianos Model

Living Pianos has based its business model on selling used pianos. Nobody can restrict the sale of used pianos across the country. High-end brands like Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, and Bechstein are often worth the cost of shipping, making this model feasible. We provide high-quality videos and photos so you know what you’re getting. Experienced pianists are always welcome to visit and try the pianos.

Digital Pianos

Digital pianos are another exception. They can be shipped easily, but some digital pianos fall under the same protected territories as acoustic pianos. There are two categories: MI (Musical Instruments) sold in places like Guitar Center and Sweetwater, and home units with protected territories.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about protected territories in the piano industry? Is it good to protect dealers who invest in inventory, or should you be able to shop anywhere for the best price? Let’s get a discussion going at LivingPianos.com. We primarily sell used pianos and abide by all rules for new pianos, ensuring the survival of the piano business.

In 2005, there were 1,200 Piano Stores in the United States

Now, there are less than 150 Piano Stores in the U.S.

The only way the piano will stay relevant in people’s lives is if they can experience it online, like everything else

The piano business is one of the only industries still operating with a 20th century model of independent, mom and pop stores selling pianos in protected territories. You need a critical mass of piano stores so people are even exposed to the instrument. Online is the only way to go.

Imagine being able to summon a grand piano to your living room from your phone, then having interactive musical experience for your family anytime that’s convenient for you.

Living Pianos makes getting a piano as simple as calling up something on Netflix! When people join the Living Pianos community, they get to share their music and musical experiences with tens of thousands of other Living Pianos subscribers.

Living Pianos Virtual Showroom allows visitors to experience rare Steinway, Bosendorfer, Seiler, Baldwin and other top-tier American and European pianos with rich media. You not only get the aid of thousands of articles and videos searchable by keywords, but also a personal team of pianists, technicians and teachers providing the ultimate musical experience without leaving your home!

Logistics are the biggest challenge facing companies trying to sell pianos nationally. But having started as an online piano company in 2006, Living Pianos has sold pianos to places as diverse as the Royal Theater in London to Shenzhen, China.

Operating a successful online piano store involves handling everything, from providing professional guidance in selecting the right instruments, to coordinating deliveries and servicing instruments around the country. Only the most cutting edge companies offer interactive musical training with rich media content. Living Pianos has thousands of videos and articles and hosts live, interactive events.

What better way is there to share time at home than with music!

When you join the Living Pianoscommunity, you get to share your music and your musical experiences with tens of thousands of other Living Pianos subscribers. Feel stuck at home? This could be the perfect opportunity to enrich your family with music with the turnkey system offered by the world’s first online piano store, Living Pianos.

Today you are going to get a glimpse in the accompanying video into our studio where we record our videos! Starting out in the control room, you will hear a brief snippet of a recording project for a film score we recorded this weekend. It is a documentary which features ragtime music. Through some creative equalization and other techniques, we reproduced the sound of a piano going through a 1930’s radio! The piano was recorded on my new prototype which provides a virtual concert grand experience which I will demonstrate briefly for you. As you can hear, it sounds like a first class concert grand! It’s funny that we downgraded the audio experience to 1930’s technology for the film!

Moving into the performance room, you see grand pianos, microphones, lights and the equipment we use to record videos. The acoustics are dialed in with bass traps in the corners to avoid a muddy sound, while keeping reflections for natural reverberation.

Recording has been a passion of mine since childhood. My father had professional recording equipment in his teaching studio growing up. I would get his hand-me-down equipment which I played with as a young child. Eventually, I got into recording music both in the studio and on location for fun and later professionally.

I also had the good fortune of attending my father’s recording sessions from a young age. The Connoisseur Society Recordings from then were state-of-the-art and hold up well on CD today. In fact there was an artistry to these recordings that is quite rare as you can hear on some of these links on YouTube:

This might sound like a crazy question, however, this might be possible!

Player pianos have come a long way since the days of paper rolls and pedal-based systems:

Eventually player systems progressed to floppy disks, to CDs and eventually to what we have today, which are player systems that are barely even visible on the pianos:

Today’s systems are controlled wirelessly through remotes, smart phones, and tablets that actually work off your home’s wi-fi network. Because these systems are based on a wi-fi connection, they could theoretically be hacked!

You’d need to have someone who is pretty adept at breaking into home networks and a strange reason to hack your piano but anything is possible right?

The only scenario I could see this being even a remote possibility is if you’re a famous musician who stores your piano recordings on your piano’s player system – such as Disklavier or other recording device. Maybe someone would want to steal your music or destroy your work for malicious purposes. This is a far-fetched scenario, but it could potentially happen!

Expert hackers will always find a way around encryptions but keeping strangers out of your wireless network or piano is dependant on you to come up with a strong passwords and not share them publicly.

While I don’t think people will be hacking into your piano anytime soon, if you have a wireless player system on your piano and hear your piano playing in the middle of the night for no reason – this could be why!