The piano is cold: sales have fallen off a cliff, and some teachers can't recruit a new student in half a year

When paying the registration fee, a mother asked, "Can you pay 15 classes first?" The reason was straightforward, "I earn less, and my family doesn't dare to spend money lavishly." There has been a noticeable change in the mindset of parents. Prudence, entanglement, and hesitation have become the main theme. "In the past, you could earn 100 yuan a day, and you didn't feel distressed to spend 50 yuan, but now you can only earn 50 yuan a day. ”

The piano, like the school district, once maintained the imagination of middle-class families for class status, they hoped that their children would achieve something in the piano and continue their unfinished dreams, but what actually drove them was the fear of the decline of the class of future generations. It's just that when they themselves are also declining, they can't maintain a huge investment, and the piano with no return is destined to be abandoned, and middle-class parents are also rolling up to more cost-effective places.

Text: Li Qingyang

Editor: Zhao Lei

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The moment of giving up

"That's it, I won't play it anymore. Hearing Ning Junling say this, her daughter, who is in the first year of junior high school, blinked, and did not react much, as if she had urged her to practice the piano in the past six years, "I am very willing to say it, and I am not very resistant."

Six years ago, when his daughter was still in the first grade of primary school, Ning Junling became a piano boy father. The vast majority of the people who go to class with their children are mothers, who are the few fathers. In class, he sat on the side, listened to the teacher's lecture on fingering, taught music theory, and bought a book of "Introduction to Staves" and a book of "Fundamentals of Music Theory".

The first days of learning the piano were sweet. When learning Xiao Tang Er, after practicing the piano once, Ning Junling encouraged her daughter to preview and familiarize herself with "The London Bridge Collapsed" to be learned in the next class in advance. The first time I played this piece, my seven-year-old daughter looked at the score and played it very smoothly. At that moment, "I felt like she was glowing." On the day of class, my daughter also bounced out in front of the teacher smoothly, "I am very proud".

Another time, my daughter practiced a song with a sad tone, and suddenly cried while playing. Ning Junling could feel that "at that moment, she was immersed in it and resonated with the music."

But that's the only moment of the highlight. Since "London Bridge Collapsed", with the increasing difficulty of the song, children's understanding of playing the piano and interest in learning seem to have "collapsed".

Ning Junling felt anxious, every time he saw his daughter playing the piano and folding her fingers, and a song was still stuck after practicing many times, he couldn't help but remind and correct it, and the contradiction with the child gradually appeared. For a long time, whenever I practiced the piano, the family was full of chickens and dogs.

When the interest gradually fades and the sense of accomplishment becomes more and more difficult to obtain, the process of practicing the piano is only left to polish repeatedly, and after a long time, it is easy to get bored.

Qiu Xiaoyu, who lives in Hangzhou, has a daughter who began learning the piano at the age of 4. Like many parents, she sets goals for her children to take exams to push them and increase motivation for practice. "If you don't take the exam, you won't be able to practice. If you don't practice, you're not interested, and you're not growing, so what are we going to do with this teaching fee?"

If you change to another instrument, maybe the child is not interested, and the parents will let it go. But pianos are different, and the huge cost of buying a piano and taking classes makes many parents unwilling to stop. Qiu Xiaoyu's child spent 400 yuan for a lesson, and the piano was bought for more than 30,000 yuan in Japanese imported kawaii. Ning Junliang spent 26,000 yuan to buy a piano, and after six years of learning the piano, he had to pay tens of thousands of tuition fees every year.

▲ Picture / Visual China

The cost of money is still secondary, and it is even more regrettable that the time invested. The piano is a specialty that needs to be practiced every day, and if you are a little lazy, you will become unfamiliar. In order to lay a good foundation, many children start to learn the piano from kindergarten or first grade, because the age is too young, most parents have to accompany the school, and they must always supervise when practicing. Xiaolu, who lives in Qinghai, has accompanied her son throughout the four years of learning the piano, "accompanying her every day in class and after class, and practicing the piano for half an hour to an hour every day."

But if you continue to bite the bullet, you will only get more pain. At the end of December, her husband took a piano lesson instead of Qiu Xiaoyu. After the end, her husband told her that the whole process was painful for her daughter, painful for him as an observer, and painful for the teacher. Qiu Xiaoyu is not unclear, recalling the experience of learning the piano in the past five years, in her impression, her daughter's practice is mechanical, like clockwork, and when her parents urge her, she will move once, "not particularly happy and enjoyable".

Many parents have a similar pain - their children are not active in practice, and they must be urged or even scolded before they are willing to sit in front of the piano and move their fingers. Ning Junling felt pain and blamed herself, "Every time she practiced, she had to yell, and sometimes she played while shedding tears."

The most obvious result of unhappiness in practicing the piano is slow progress or even stagnancy. Qiu Xiaoyu found that her daughter often made mistakes in the beat and couldn't remember the clef accurately, "Sometimes I hear the mistake, but she doesn't know it." But she always has hope, "I may be interested when I practice."

When his daughter first started to learn the piano, Ning Junling always had a fantasy in his mind - on a weekend afternoon, he was lying on a chair on the balcony, the sun bathed in the living room, and his daughter was wearing a beautiful puffy skirt and playing soothing piano music. After a few years of studying, he found this fantasy almost impossible to achieve. The moment the song sounded, everything was indeed as imagined, "but after 30 seconds, the sound froze, and I knew that I had played the wrong note, and I broke my fingers again."

As the age and difficulty of the repertoire increases, it is even more suffocating that the pressure of the major academic career. went to junior high school, in order to prepare for the sports high school entrance examination, Ning Junling had to take his daughter to the swimming pool every weekend to practice swimming. As a result, there is less time to practice the piano.

The child has no time and no interest, the parents spend money and energy, the relationship between parents and children is still affected, and the piano has completely become a chicken rib.

A few years ago, Ning Junling replaced his house in Shanghai, and the mortgage became a huge and necessary monthly expense for the family. Before changing houses, he rarely felt that it was expensive for his children to learn piano and tennis, and later under the pressure of repaying the loan, "learning piano is always an expense".

Back then, he spent two months discussing with his wife whether to buy a piano or whether to learn the piano, insisted on sparring for several years, and paid for a long time, and when it came time to give up, it only took a few words. Ning Junling's biggest feeling was only exhaustion, "no strength and other emotions".

He wanted to go to the institution for a refund, but learned that he could only refund 60%, and if he didn't get a refund, he could change to vocal music. So he asked his daughter to learn singing for another year. The black piano that had accompanied her daughter for six years was covered with a white dust cover and rested in a corner of the room as a dumb piece of furniture.

The prosperity of the past

Every parent who lets their child learn the piano has a good idea at the beginning.

In the community where Ning Junling is located, in the summer of several years, there are piano shops that set up a platform in the community square and hold a "summer conference". The children of the piano shop, dressed in long skirts and small suits, took turns on the stage to play the piano in style, and the audience gathered around the parents. Once, Ning Junling passed by after work, and couldn't help but stop and listen for a while, and came up with the idea of letting his daughter learn the piano.

Since childhood, Ning Junling has had a yearning and obsession with the piano. He grew up in Hebei County, and in his post-80s childhood, Richard Clayderman was often shown on music on TV on on-demand programs, and the piano prince wore a white dress to play "Dream Wedding" and "Adhelina by the Water", which he never got tired of listening to. Later, I watched "Domestic Lingling Paint" starring Stephen Chow, also dressed in a white suit, holding a cigarette that could never fall in his mouth, and squinting to play "Li Xianglan", which left a deep memory on him.

He observed that his fingers were slender and flexible, and felt that they were "naturally suitable for playing the piano", but at that time, "there was not necessarily a piano in the whole county".

Let his daughter learn the piano and become a continuation of his dream.

The vast majority of parents of piano children are unqualified when they are young, and when they have the ability, they don't want their children to regret it. In their hearts, the piano is not only a specialty, but also contains a certain possibility to lead to a higher life, learning piano can not only show taste but also hint at wealth, so it has become a common choice for middle-class families.

Like the school district, the piano industry was also extremely hot. In the past few years, piano shops have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and leaflets of newly opened piano shops have appeared from time to time in the Ningjunqi community. At the door of the piano shop downstairs, there are often children sitting in line waiting for class.

Ma Jiaqi, 30 years old this year, just graduated from university in 2016 and worked as a piano teacher in a piano shop in Nanjing. On the first day of employment, her boss told her that there were three students who wanted to sign up, and asked her to hold a trial class, "If you can sign up immediately, the student will be yours." In less than half a day, she gained three new students. This is not an isolated case, many newly opened piano shops, in a short period of time, the number of students can be filled.

Ning Junling remembers that when several piano stores around the community were recruiting, "the time of excellent teachers had to be robbed". Yan He, who graduated from Xidian University with a major in recording art and has been a piano teacher in Shijiazhuang for more than ten years, described the craze for learning piano at that time, "The audition conversion rate is 100%".

In 2016, Ma Jiaqi graduated from the music department of the normal college, and his monthly income was more than 5,000 yuan when he first joined. At that time, the piano lesson fee was generally 100 yuan per lesson, and according to the four-six division, a teacher could earn 6,000 yuan if he took 25 lessons a week, which was "higher than the salary of ordinary clerks and salesmen."

The strong demand is attracting more people to enter the piano training industry. Yan He once went back to the piano store and chatted with the sales about the piano teacher of a certain institution, and learned that the teacher was also a salesman here, a professional kindergarten teacher, and had no systematic piano training, so he could only play some simple children's rhymes to accompaniment. In the eyes of a teacher with a professional background, this is "a person who knows how to sing and play the piano".

Many half-way piano teachers, in order to put on a layer of academic "shield" for themselves, spend thousands of yuan to participate in the outsourcing training courses of the conservatory, and after obtaining the certificate, they are packaged as "graduated from a certain conservatory". In the past ten years, Ma Jiaqi has listened to countless peers introduce themselves and often carry them out of Nanjing University of the Arts, "In fact, how many graduates of Nanjing Art are there every year?"

Avid parents don't care that much. Liu Guo, who has opened a piano shop in Xi'an for more than 20 years, felt that most of the parents who bought pianos at that time were out of following the trend. "Some people came up and said that they saw their neighbor's children in school and wanted to buy one, and he wanted to buy a piano for as much as the neighbor bought." Ning Junling let his daughter learn the piano, half out of his wish, and half more or less driven by the environment. At that time, in his circle of friends, from time to time, some people posted videos of children learning the piano, and the progress of the children's piano learning exams was also a topic and conversation point for parents when chatting.

Due to the high selling price of new pianos, some consumers who want to let their children learn the piano but have limited financial means have turned their attention to the second-hand market. In 2018, Wang Jueming and her husband started a second-hand piano business in Yantai, importing original second-hand pianos from South Korea and Japan. At that time, business was booming, and every time the goods came, "the goods were still being unloaded here, and the people who bought the pianos over there were waiting in line."

▲ Picture / Visual China

Wang Jueming set up a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, and was busy from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. every day. There are many parents who come to pick the piano, and there are also many piano shops, "some piano shops will take more than ten or twenty at once".

When the sales were at their best, they were shipping every day, selling more than 300 units every month, earning more than one million and making a profit of 60%. The high returns attract many gold diggers. Many second-hand dealers buy second-hand pianos in bulk from Wang Jueming, and sell them at a price of 3,500 yuan, "how can they earn more than ordinary part-time jobs."

Some people refurbish the second-hand piano with poor quality, repaint the outer layer, and polish the wet or rat-bitten areas on the inside to cover up the damage marks. With the shell of an imported piano, a piano worth only a few thousand can be sold for 30,000 yuan or 40,000 yuan.

Ma Jiaqi told Daily People that at that time, some piano shops would cooperate with piano manufacturers, and a piano sold for more than 30,000 yuan, the piano teacher took a 10,000 yuan, and the piano store could earn close to 20,000 yuan, "a lot of oil and water". This kind of piano shop is usually named after some musicians, such as Beethoven pianos, Hanon pianos, and Czerny pianos, which sound foreign names, but are actually small domestic brand pianos. When Ning Junling chose a piano for his daughter, he knew that "you can't buy something named after a pianist".

It's not enough to tell by the name. Parents came to the piano shop, and some merchants deliberately scattered the tone of big-name pianos such as Yamaha, and then showed them the timbre of some high-profit pianos, so as to complete the sales and get a commission.

But these can't stop the enthusiasm of parents, in order for their children to learn the elegant art of piano, they are willing to buy expensive pianos, accompany their children to class, and spend all kinds of money to let their children take exams. No matter how many cases of failure have been made by predecessors, I occasionally think, what if my child is that material?

Escape the bottomless pit

Learning the piano is a long penance, and children's talent and hard work, as well as parents' money and companionship, are often indispensable. Just like Lang Lang's success, it is inseparable from his father's severity and sacrifice, and the vast majority of parents, in addition to limited companionship, can provide the greatest support is money.

Yan He has a special notebook to record the number of classes assigned by students in each school year. In 2022, she took a total of 597 lessons, and in 2023, that number has halved to 275. Last winter, when the flu was prevalent, students often took time off because of illness, and after a long period of absence, children's interest was lost, and their enthusiasm was even more difficult than before.

▲ Yan He's class arrangement in 2017 has students every day from morning to night. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee

Yan He felt that in the past two years, the parents who were responsible for picking up and accompanying the school "can be seen to be very hard". In the early years, when someone asked for leave, she would also emphasize that she could not interrupt the continuity, "Now I feel that everyone is working hard, and slowly becoming a Buddha."

Two weeks ago, Yan He accepted the only freshman in the near future. It was a little girl in the second grade, and her mother brought her daughter to try out the class last October.

The mother works in a pharmaceutical company, likes to make beads and necklaces on weekdays, and from time to time in the circle of friends posts some updates on taking her children out for travel and daily diet, "not because the family's income is tight." Even so, she struggled with questions such as "whether to buy a piano, where to get this big money, and where to put the piano when she bought it" for two months, until the child's grandmother announced that she was willing to take out this money to support, and then she made up her mind to let her child learn the piano.

When paying the registration fee, the mother asked Yan He, "Can you pay fifteen classes first?" The reason was straightforward, "I earn less, and my family doesn't dare to spend money lavishly."

Yan He remembered that in previous years, parents paid the class fee with a big wave of their hand, and they paid it for a year as soon as they paid. In the past, buying a piano rarely took months to think about. In 2016, she was asked by the parents of the children on the first day of class to go to the piano shop to pick the piano together. As soon as I transferred two piano stores, "the 28,000 yuan piano was immediately bought."

Parents have noticed a noticeable change in their mindset. Prudence, entanglement, and hesitation have become the main theme.

Some of the parents Yan He met asked for the fee when they came up, and when they heard that they wanted 150 yuan for a class, they no longer replied. Some of them repeatedly compared, looking left and right, "Do you want to buy a real piano?" This left Yan He with a feeling that the parents who sent their children to learn the piano "are not completely out of money, but more because they don't want to invest too much in this area."

"In the past, you could earn 100 yuan a day, and you didn't feel distressed to spend 50 yuan, but now you can only earn 50 yuan a day. ”

In Nanjing, Ma Jiaqi has not recruited new students for half a year. The number of students participating in the trial class has been greatly reduced, and even parents who are willing to do so are filled with many anxious questions, asking non-stop questions about "when can the exam be examined, whether it will affect the cultural class, and whether the fee can be discounted".

▲ In November last year, Ma Jiaqi's studio's year-end report performance. Photo / Courtesy of the interviewee

In the past, the idea of parents was "sign up and try it if they think it is good", but now they have to shop around; in the past, they had to study well after signing up, find a good teacher to buy a piano, and "roll out the results", but now they can't help but weigh, "five years of school may not necessarily have any results, it is better to do something else".

While it is difficult to recruit new students, old students are also being lost. Yan He has been teaching for ten years, and "I can't count how many students have refunded". With the increase of academic pressure, the fifth and sixth grades to junior high school are the "high incidence period" of dropping out of classes.

In order for their children to obtain a grade 10 certificate before junior high school, some parents skip a grade to learn the piano, so that the children whose actual practice repertoire is not enough to take the high-level repertoire. Yan He had taught a boy before, and she was the only student she had passed the tenth grade in so many years. In order to obtain a preferential place in a junior high school in Hengshui, the child's mother required that he must be admitted to the tenth level. "Finally, the long and difficult tunes that have been tested are actually very difficult for children of this age. ”

Later, the regulations on skipping exams were abolished, and the time cost of obtaining the corresponding certificates was relatively increased, and the attraction of the examination to parents was reduced. Parents have less motivation to supervise, and children have no goals, "it is more difficult to settle down to study hard."

Neither can it help to go to school, but also can't see the effect, and there is not so much money to build casually, the piano is completely reduced to chicken ribs.

In the past six months, the sales volume of pianos in Wang Jueming's store has not even been one-third compared with when the business was good before, "At that time, people bought pianos every day, and now there are several orders a month." Warehouse rent, final payment, logistics costs and other items add up, and the business has owed six or seven hundred thousand. During this time, the number of second-hand pianos from domestic families is also increasing. From time to time, parents come to ask whether to accept the piano, most of them are children who have no energy to learn to practice the piano, she also met a parent who "shot immediately after the tenth grade", Wang Jueming wondered, "This is all ten grades, it has already started, what are you selling pianos for?"

Some time ago, Ning Junling swiped a mother selling pianos in the circle of friends, and the price was easy to discuss. When asked about the reason, "The child is in junior high school, the first time he has no time to practice, and the second bullet is not famous, it is better to deal with the pull-down and save the space at home."

In the past, there was a lively piano shop near his home, and his daughter had been in the piano shop for several years, but some time ago he happened to pass by and found that it had been closed.

Roll to a more cost-effective place

Ning Junling also had the idea of selling pianos. The market understands the price of a piano, and then sells the second-hand piano, the brand, the production age of the piano itself, and the degree of use all have an impact on the price. Now that there are fewer and fewer people learning the piano, except for the original imported Yamaha and kawaii, the price fluctuates little, and other brands are at least 5% off. Ning Junling's piano is not a big name, and after estimating, "it won't sell for much money, and it doesn't mean much", so the plan was shelved.

Recently, my youngest son has become interested in the piano, and from time to time he sits on the piano bench and touches the black and white keys. Seeing that his son had signs of learning the piano, he turned out Xiao Tang Yi again, planning to teach his son once a week for family enlightenment. However, his daughter's experience of learning the piano made him dare not rashly send his son to learn the piano again, and he lost most of his heart, thinking that this was more like a "whim", and maybe it would soon disappear like a practice video that is no longer common in the circle of friends, and the topic of learning the piano that is no longer talked about in the circle of parents.

Sun Zhouxing, a post-90s mother in Zhejiang, was particularly impressed by what the principal said at the opening ceremony of her eldest son's primary school in 2022: "Now there are more than 60 million piano children in the country, and there is no need for so many, so don't learn (piano) anymore." "The principal wants parents to set aside time for their children outside of class. When his son was in kindergarten, the garden invited doctoral students from the Conservatory of Music, and the parents gathered around him to ask what instrument the child was suitable for learning, and his answer was that there are too many children who can play the piano now, "there is no advantage."

Sun Zhouxuan paid close attention to the observation that there were indeed very few classmates in the eldest son's class who studied musical instruments, almost no boys, and a few were girls. As a former piano child, Sun Zhouxing did not choose to let her children "inherit" her piano skills.

When he was a child, Sun Zhouxing was forced by his mother to practice the electronic piano, and the memory is still indelible. The teacher who taught the piano was extremely strict and always scolded. Her mother also criticized her for a few years of piano practice, so much so that she always felt that she played badly and had a strong resistance to playing the piano. Every time she goes to class, close to the intersection of the Children's Palace where she learns the piano, she will be "very scared". For several years after passing the electronic piano grade 10 exam, she never touched the piano again.

Such examples are not uncommon. In Sun Zhouxing's view, part of the reason why the piano is cold is that people like her who learn the piano are parents, who have learned the piano when they were children, and know that it is not easy and painful to learn the piano, "the cognition is no longer the same as when the piano was pursued in the past." Therefore, the craze for following the trend of learning the piano has subsided, and it has returned to the rationality of aesthetic education.

However, although the piano is no longer hot, the parents' chicken babies and involution in extracurricular interests have not been suspended.

Ning Junliang's son is currently in the second grade of primary school, is on the school's football team, and stays at school every day after school to play football for a while. In addition to football, students also learn badminton, table tennis, basketball, etc. Sports have become the focus of parents' spending, "money always has to be spent, and I don't feel at ease if I don't spend some money."

He recently consulted for a tennis lesson, and a one-on-two lesson costs 350 yuan, which is much more expensive than the 150 yuan price of a one-on-one lesson when he was a piano beginner. Huang Yan, a mother in Guangzhou, also found that her son's piano lesson was 125 yuan, which was cheaper than a one-on-two basketball lesson of 129 yuan at the same time. Sun Zhouxing's son takes football lessons, charges a fee once a semester, and conducts intensive training during the summer vacation, and the price is more than 20,000 yuan a year.

▲ Picture / Visual China

In a sense, in the families that could learn the piano in the past, the parents' anxiety about the chicken baby did not disappear with the suspension of the piano class, but went elsewhere. But compared with the piano, sports can at least exercise the body, and the consumption of parents is less, which is always more cost-effective.

For those who are still in this industry, if they want to survive, Yan He and Ma Jiaqi both believe that "the only way out is to maintain good old students". Ma Jiaqi is currently running her own studio, and she regards "service" as the first priority in her teaching work, "first coaxing parents, then coaxing children, and finally teaching".

In the past, she has seen her peers receive complaints because of their harsh teaching style, but at that time, students were easy to recruit, and now students have become a scarce resource, "retaining a student, and it is likely that there will be a chance to bring you a new life". The service tests emotional intelligence, requiring teachers to follow the wishes of parents and coax children to learn, "If you want to take the exam, I will give you the exam, if you don't want to take the exam, then we won't take the exam, if you want to play some good music, then play some good music." In addition to teaching the piano, it also provides emotional value, so that the business can be sustained.

At the end of last year, an elderly university in Shijiazhuang recruited piano teachers, and Yan He successfully applied for the job with the mentality of "give it a try", and he could take up his post after March. Teaching at a university for the elderly, the salary is not high, once a week, 200 yuan at a time, "equivalent to me recruiting one more student". In addition, unlike the one-on-one teaching that has been used for ten years, it is for older students in a class and teaches in groups for two hours at a time.

Yan He saw this as an opportunity, and the children learned less, so they found another way to develop the elderly market. She can also use this to expand her reputation, "The elderly always have grandchildren, maybe there will be children in group classes in the future."

(Except for Liu Guo, the names of the interviewees have been changed)

The article is the original work of Daily People, and infringement must be investigated.