I think 7 octatrack’s per guitar center per year is optimistic. (Just talking about guitar center, not overall sales). Not all (I would guess not even most) have them in stock in the store, or advertise them. I know if I wanted to buy an octatrack from my guitar center I would have to get them to order it, I certainly couldn’t just go pick one up. There are no retail locations that I know of anywhere near me where I could demo an elektron device. I think expecting every guitar center in the country to sell 1 every one to two months is optimistic.
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I think market situation matters, though - because some potential likely enthusiasts are priced out. A couple volcas or a Behringer box are far more affordable. Hell, even cheap electronic pianos and entry level violins are more economically accessible (and that’s shaped by, but also a heavy constraint on the culture).
My guess is 261,000 OTs sold in its lifetime. I’m basing this on YT views of this video, prove me wrong 
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Now this is purely anecdotal: Personally I have not played a single gig with my electronic stuff, but plenty as a key player/pianist in bands, accompanying singers or choirs etc. I have not met (in real life) even one hobbyist/semi-pro musician seriously doing electronic music either.
I’m the only person I know who, at least openly, owns an octatrack.
I don’t know anyone who owns a bassoon.
From this I can extrapolate that nobody ever owned a bassoon… or a Sam Smith album.
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I know at least three oboe players, but I’m in the experimental theatre/opera/circus world so my demographic is probably skewed in all sorts of odd directions. I know soooo many harmonium players for instance - way more than Octatrack users. Just saying that they’re out there!
I agree it’s unrealistic, but I think it’s unrealistically high.
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I am delighted by the extent of reasonable disagreement on this question. I was worried the answer was obvious and I’d missed it. And I really want to know the answer: how many of us are there?
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Well I use an OT MK2 and stumbled into Elektron gassing on YouTube getting sampling integrated into my setup and now my whole setup. So it wasn’t through my local guitar center or music store but the net. I’d say Elektron is a rising brand but that’s just my guess.
this is not a productive discussion.
even if you don’t think every guitar center sells 10 ot per year, you can average things based on other stores having additional chains, CME doing a huge amount of business, sweetwaters large sales base, thomann doing a ton of intenet business, and people buying from elektron directly - just so many ways to balance things out. without hard numbers this is just throwing darts blindfolded. no one said the ot is outselling the digitakt or model anything, there are no outrageous claims here. unless someone has numbers from elektron saying less than 2000 units per year are being sold worldwide, this discussion will not bear fruit.
I’m more interested in how many OT owners or any other “live performance”-centric gear actually plays live in front of people?
this is the most popular Octatrack video on YT:
only 450k views in 9 years its been uploaded. That is not very much at all.
We are more like tenor sax players in jazz. a subset of a subset
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I personally know four Octatrack owners and only one oboeist, my deceased grandfather. Therefore the Octatrack is more popular.
Look, I want an oboe now. The point is, we are all massively outnumbered by guitarists, everything that isn’t a guitar or piano is niche.
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I’m still really intrigued by the numbers tho. This is our secret kingdom. But how many other people actually own a Deluge, an M8, an OPZ? How many people are having this fun? I wonder if one day it won’t be commercially sensitive and it’ll just be known, like the number of whatever car is presumably known.
I gotta lotta oboes.
I tried the bassoon but it was too complicated to get my head round and I wasn’t keen about on the sound quality… like it didn’t gel with my workflow and the manual was too complicated so I sold it, bought a recorder and never looked back.
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I’ve got a little data that will help give an impression of how many of us there are. Spoiler: a lot more than I expected.
In 2020 I posted a YouTube tutorial on using how to configure Logic Pro X to use overbridge to record the Digitakt. My channel basically had no subscribers and the only other video I’d posted had about 100 views. I made the video to help one specific Elektronauts member and would have been happy to get 100 views. I figured it’s pretty niche: there’s not that many Digitakt owners, not even half of them will use Logic, even fewer will be interested in Overbridge multitracking, and fewer still will find my video.
830 days later it’s had over 16,000 views, 123 comments, 565 likes and it’s gained me 130 subscribers.
I never imagined it would get that many views and I’m it kind of blows my mind when I start to multiply up the numbers. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think there’s 500,000 or maybe a million Digitakt owners out there. Wild!
Great question!!
I have zero to add but I’d love to know the true numbers.
There are 4927 Octatrack players and 4929 bassoonists.
You’re welcome
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