SIC 3931 Musical Instruments
SIC 3931
This category covers establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing musical instruments and parts and accessories for musical instruments. The primary products in this category are pianos, with or without player attachments, and organs. This industry also includes string, fretted, wind, percussion, and electronic instruments.
339992
Musical Instrument Manufacturing
At one time, the ability to play a musical instrument was considered an essential part of a person's basic education. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, electronic advances like video games and music-playback machines combined with increasingly hectic lifestyles to make the effort of mastering a musical instrument somewhat less appealing. Nevertheless more than 60 million musicians resided in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, musical instrument manufacturers shipped $1.82 billion worth of product in 2003.
As part of the personal consumer durables category, musical instrument purchases depend greatly on consumer confidence. Such purchases are made with disposable personal income. In addition, in times of recession, discretionary spending for school bands and orchestras, personal music lessons, and high-end instruments become the first casualties of austere budgets. Reflecting a strong economy and low unemployment, production of acoustic pianos and school instruments increased in the late 1990s, decreased in the early 2000s, and was increasing again in the mid-2000s.
While dominated by a few large manufacturers, the musical instruments industry has remained rather fragmented. Traditionally, the musical instruments industry has been dominated by the production of pianos, player pianos, organs (including electronic), and parts for those products.
While some automation had been introduced to the manufacture of musical instruments, the processes generally remained labor and materials intensive. The cost of building quality pianos soared during the later half of the twentieth century. A good piano used more than 8,000 moving parts, many of which required rare super-quality materials like ten-grain-per-inch spruce and highest-grade wool. Foreign competitors pushed into the market with innovative man-made materials and mass-production techniques that dramatically lowered the cost and increased the flexibility of the instruments.
The Victorian era (1830 to 1880) saw the enthroning of music, especially piano music, as an essential stabilizing element of society and, particularly, the family. In 1881, the Chambers' Journal reported: "In every house there is an altar devoted to Saint Cecilia, and all are taught to serve her to the best of their ability. The altar is the pianoforte."
The expected devotees of music were mainly women. In 1922, the Music Teachers National Conference noted that 75 percent of all concert audiences were women and 85 percent of music students were female. In 1978, 57 percent of all music students were female and 79 percent of all piano students were as well. As early as 1840, the American "piano girl" was a recognizable stereotype; at the time, musical ability was thought to enhance a woman's social prestige.
The piano brought families together to play and listen, becoming the centerpiece of the Victorian family and an avidly sought after item in the growing industrialization of hectic post-World War I America. The musical instruments industry sought to capitalize on that interest and place a piano in every parlor in the nation.
Before 1800, all pianos were grand pianos that required a lot of space, but that year saw the development of the John Hawkins' Portable Grand Piano, the precursor of the now-familiar upright piano. That innovation allowed the piano into the parlors of the middle class, a development paralleled by the refinement of the music box...
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