I have no clear intuitions about how many of us roam the earth, and that’s weird. Are there now more bedroom producers than people learning the violin? Are there more octatrack players than bassoon players? Are we niche, or are we the mainstream?
For example
are there 1,000 maniacs who set out to master the octatrack, or 10,000, or 100,000? Is the digitakt three or fifty times more popular?
what about cheaper tools from mainstream outlets? I have no idea how many are sold of, say, volca, Roland boutiques, behringer (yuck) model d?
how many units will a (afaict) small manufacturer sell, like… Twisted Electrons blast beats, is it 100 or 5,000? 1010 lemondrop? Oto boum?
I don’t really care about it from a commercial perspective, and I’m not interested in detailed commercial secrets. I’m interested in the culture.
This is an interesting question. If we think about people playing instruments in the widest sense, I would guess it’s school age kids doing piano lessons or involved in school ensembles (choirs, bands, orchestras) that make up the bulk of active musicians in the world.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more adults making electronic music than there are adults playing orchestral instruments.
Age is an interesting modifier here. I bet there are more adults doing electronic music than children, and I bet it’s the other way around for orchestral instruments. But still I wonder if the number of oboes sold to hopeful parents can outstrip the number of OP1s?
As for piano, I think we have to leave that out. It’s the dominant musical species on earth, the keyboard has become the standard interface into the tonal music realm. Piano and generic home keyboards will be huge.
there’s actually a thriving but antiquated system set up to pass down and carry on the traditional instruments, its hard to know with how electronic music production techniques can be more easily spread on the internet which is more prevalent but other than major conservatories there are a lot of private learning institutes and as was said before, school children in lessons - the number of professional orchestral musicians, while not non-existent, is certainly slim.
I’m not sure. Weren’t there 1000 limited edition octatrack sold? And you almost never see those second hand. But you see lots of others in the wild. Of course the special editions went to people who love the thing and are less likely to sell but still. That means it must be tens of thousands.
Is there more than one kid learning the oboe in each school, on average? How many schools?
the world population is 7.888 billion, of that 6.74 billion is third world or developing nation. roughly 1.14 billion people. 2,280,000 is 1/5 of one percent of the first world. if lets say half of those are too young or too old to do any kind of music at all thats 1,140,000 remaining. So Its possible that 1/10th of 1 percent of the first world plays oboe.
but I don’t have any hard numbers so I can only speculate that there are not enough octatracks to fill the void.
…since tech made it happen that any laptop is a studio, bedroom productions gone mainstream, a hobby everybody can give a try…and once u catch more intrest in doing so, u spent ur first money on music gear…and all that has grown into a real massmarket…
it goes something like this…when i grew up, the average dream job was something like becoming an astronaut…and when i strarted to have my own dreams, it turned out to make music, making records…
back then, such a dream was at least 250000 bux away…only a decade later, that goal was 25000 bux away…another ten years later it was down to a least minimum of 2500 bux…
and that’s where it’s at…join the party, since the actual average dreamjob turned into utuber meets any sort of stardom…since everbody is a dj, u know…
in addition to all this, comes the factor of low and lower entry levels of skills…
once there was a time, u really needed at least some music background knowledge…
and if u were not playing at least a guitar, no way u could call urself a musician…
electronic music was not really considered as serious music of any kind…
imagine that, today…
it’s never been easier and cheaper to just get it started…
sometimes i catch myself thinking, oh my goodness, what if i just could grab my mbp meets bitwig and jump back into the early 90ies…or even, full fledged scifi, into the 80ies…
vorsprung durch technik…is a bitch and a blessing.
‘Grandson, let me show you how we used to setup the cross fader on the Octatrack MK2 for live performances, in the olden days before AI took over music…’
Yeah but when he becomes “old” his embouchure will be so strong one day he’ll just flex his face muscles (Tom Cruise style) and squeeze the mouthpiece into something long and thin.
