In recent years, the piano industry, which has always been known as the "aristocratic toy", has had a hard time, with 700 companies closing down in just one year. The performance of Pearl River Piano and Hailun Piano, the two leading piano manufacturing enterprises in China, has also declined sharply. Pearl River Piano's revenue in the first three quarters of 2023 decreased by 31.47% year-on-year, and its net profit plummeted by 90%. In the first nine months, Hailun Piano's revenue decreased by 21.99% year-on-year, and net profit decreased by 24.73% year-on-year. What's even more worrying is that in 2023, China's piano production will only be about 190,000 units, a decrease of half compared with 2019.
At the same time, piano shops and training institutions are also operating poorly. According to the data, there will be more than 25,000 music stores in the country in 2022, and 30% of them will close down a year later. A large number of training institutions have also closed their doors due to a long period of absence of trainees. The entire piano industry presents a scene of mourning.
For this reason, many netizens are confused: the mainland once became the world's largest piano consumer, and from 2017 to 2020, the annual piano sales in the mainland are as high as 400,000 units, compared with only 30,000 units in the United States. According to the data, the scale of the domestic piano market has shrunk from 194.79 billion in 2018 to 8.896 billion now. Why did the piano industry fall to such a state in just 6 years?
In fact, in the past few years, the piano market demand was strong, and a large number of children had to learn piano, and there was a reason: on the one hand, the college entrance examination can add points. As early as 2008, the mainland government promulgated a policy that stipulates that students who have obtained a certificate of grade 9 or above in the piano examination can get an extra 10 points in the high school entrance examination. This undoubtedly brings a super positive to the piano market. On the other hand, some parents see that their children around them are learning piano and feel that their children cannot be left behind, so they also want their children to play expensive pianos. This is the psychology of blind conformity.
Nowadays, the reason why the domestic piano market has continued to be sluggish and depressed is mainly due to the following three reasons: First, the college entrance examination bonus points have been cancelled. From 2021, the Ministry of Education of the mainland said that from 2024, high-level art troupes in colleges and universities will no longer be selected from the college admissions process. This means that the extra points for the college entrance examination have been cancelled. For many parents, there is no obvious benefit to letting their children learn piano.
In addition, the mainland government has also launched a "double reduction" policy, which is to reduce the burden of students' homework and extracurricular tutoring. As a result, many parents of students feel that there is no need for their children to learn piano, which not only reduces the burden of children's learning, but also reduces the burden of parents' financial expenditure.
Second, the piano industry was booming before the epidemic, when many parents of students were relatively wealthy and felt that they should train their children to learn piano. After the epidemic, many parents have reduced their income or even lost their jobs, and their lives are tight, so they cannot afford to spend tens of thousands of yuan to buy pianos and spend a lot of money to let their children learn piano.
Third, many parents now think that letting their children learn the piano while taking lessons at the same time will distract their children's energy and is not conducive to their children's normal learning. Therefore, parents no longer pay for their children to learn piano.
Now the piano industry is in a continuous downturn, not only the performance of manufacturers has declined sharply, but even the piano stores and training institutions have also closed down a large number of times. Many people reluctantly said: The "aristocratic toys" of the middle class have fallen off the altar. In fact, there are three main reasons for the downturn in the piano industry:
1. The education department canceled the extra points in the college entrance examination, and the students' families lost the motivation to learn the piano; 2. After the epidemic, the income of many middle-class families has decreased, which has also dispelled the idea of letting children learn piano. 3. Nowadays, many parents feel that their children's learning is more intense, and receiving piano training will distract his energy, which is not conducive to their children's learning. It is expected that the decline of the piano industry has become a trend, and it will be difficult to recover in the short to medium term.