Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum "Steinway is dying." - Dealer

There have been quite a few times in their history when Steinway actually reduced their prices, but I don't remember when this last happened...guessing it hasn't been done for many decades.

Steinway may not be dying, but it's got some problems.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/debtwir...ngs-shrink-in-age-of-apple/#75e890cf4b81

One analogy that comes to mind is with audio equipment. Thirty years ago, the top brand was Sony. Now they are still around but many other brands have since caught up and/or surpassed them. The same can be said for Steinway.

It sounds like Spirio is supposed to drive new sales. We were very excited about it...right up until we learned there was neither a silent play feature nor an ability to record. I guess it is for people who want something that sounds more authentic than a stereo system. It would be fascinating to talk to the people who they focus-grouped on this.

Obviously I'm wrong and they must believe a market exists for people who are willing to spend $100,000 for a player piano they won't really play. Or there are people who do play who want a player system but have no interest in silent playing or recording themselves. But I would not have thought so. So I would love to hear from the people who are going to buy a Steinway with Spirio, but who wouldn't have bought one otherwise. Or maybe Steinway thinks they will drive profits by getting everyone who was going to buy a Steinway anyway to throw in a Spirio. Which is, I believe, a $20,000 add-on.

my impression from reading the marketing propaganda about the spirio playback system, their likely market would not be serious practitioners, rather facilities and venues that fancied having a full size acoustic piano playback system for canned piano music, simulated piano music without the need to hire a musician. for occasional real performances the piano's available obviously, but not many places hire pianists for the lounge to keep at it eight to twelve hours every day and some nights. some lounges, lobbies in hotels or semi public facilities like hospitals might prefer piano to the satellite subscription station. only guessing, because the committee that came up with the idea and threw the $$ on development and production are in a realm faraway and alien to me.

There is a misconception here. There was no research and development on the Spirio.

Wayne Stahnke, who had previously designed and sold retrofit player systems for himself and others (his latest system was the Performance Live LX) was bought out by Steinway. The Spirio is a repackaged Live Performance LX.

The only development so far that I am aware of is marketing the product....and raising the add on price to almost three times what Wayne charged 2 years ago.

The thing is, who cares if they are going to die some day? If you are shopping for a piano today, you buy the one that you like the most and the the one with the best deal. If it's a Steinway you want and can afford, why wouldn't you buy it? It unlikely that Steinway won't be around to service their warranties on new pianos. Even if they weren't, a Steinway isn't going to fall to pieces on you. So in the end, what you need is a good piano and a good technician to service it. Sales-talk is 90% baloney. It's rare to get a straight up and down salesperson. The piano industry is no more or less likely to sell you snake-oil.

Regarding the Spirio's intended market, The Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson stated this in a blog post:

[Former Steinway CEO Michael] Sweeney explained to me: “A concert pianist will take two years with us picking out their B. It’s a once in a lifetime purchase for them, and we are delighted to take the time with whatever they need, that’s what Steinway is for. With the Spirio, though, a businessman walks in, sees the demonstration for 10 minutes, and writes a check for $110,000 on the spot because he’s buying for his mother or his kids.”

It's on ethaniverson.com. I'm not linking the article directly as it is political in nature.

As for whether Steinway is dying on not, I don't know, and I haven't touched one of the company's pianos in a couple decades. From what I understand, however, life for a company owned by a hedge fund can be difficult and is often marked by a poor debt rating (and Moody's outlook on the company is negative). Of course, Steinway is different and will often attract people to the brand even though it may not make financial sense; that may include the company's current owner.

Rich,
You're absolutely right about the Steinway Spirio. It is a rebranded version of Wayne Stahnke's very advanced and much admired retrofit 1020-bit high definition Live Performance LX Player system - very similar in technology and capability to the factory-installed Yamaha Disklavier Pro system he also helped develop. But it is sold at a premium price relative to the Live Performance LX because: 1) it is installed in the Steinway factory at time of build as an option on the i. 6'11" Steinway B worldwide, ii. 5'7" Steinway M in North America and iii. 6' Steinway O in Europe and Asia and 2) Spirio owners can access the entire proprietary (Live Performance LX) catalog of current and future high definition (non-MIDI) format music through the Steinway & Sons App on their iOS device - an iPad comes with Steinway Spirio at the time of purchase. The good news is that there is no extra fee and nothing to download for Spirio owners since the music catalog lives on the iPad App and they have already paid a premium up front for this lifetime access. The bad news is that current Live Performance LX retrofit users are no longer able to purchase new Spirio titles or former LX titles... and are now limited to playback of their existing titles as well as the high definition MIDI files still available for the Yamaha Disklavier Pro and from sites such as:
http://www.piano-e-competition.com/midiinstructions.asp and
http://www.spencerserolls.com/Live_Performance_LX.html

The primary reason I went with PianoDisc iQ with SilentDrive HD rather than install one of the few remaining high definition Live Performance LX retrofit systems in my new Mason & Hamlin BB was: 1) the lockout of current LX users from the purchase of some truly outstanding legacy Live Performance LX library titles - now available only to Spirio owners; which included Zenph's RePerformance of Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations, as well as Zenph's RePerformance of a number of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson titles (and had been formerly available in Yamaha ESEQ format) and 2) the inability of the LX system to record performances as with Yamaha Disklavier Pro and ProRecord. In my opinion, the former is quite short-sighted on Steinway's part as I believe there is a substantial LX, PianoDisc, and Disklavier market that would have purchased these older and upcoming library titles if they were made available even in a standard MIDI format. But it's all about marketing and they made their decision and so did I... and I couldn't be happier. I was able to select my 7' Mason & Hamlin BB at the factory, and have both a very capable HD 1024-bit MIDI Player system (capable of playing any standard or HD MIDI file or proprietary PianoDisc file) and an affordable standard MIDI optical record system installed to boot at the factory on an instrument of my choice, for half of the cost of a new, player-only 7' Steinway B Spirio piano that I would not have been able to select.

I don't have much to add to this thread in terms of practicality or tangible experience with Steinway pianos. But I do know a little about human psychology and behavior. In modern society, there is a strong urge to align ones self with absolute prestige, or to achieve a certain status among our piers (keeping up with the Joneses, if you will).

Hence, the Steinway brand will never die completely, even if the current company goes out of business. The brand will be bought or sold or traded as a commodity; and, as others have mentioned, there are enough Steinway pianos already in existence to perpetuate the brand name.

So, in my view, Steinway is not only not dying, it will be the last brand name to actually bite the dust.

Just my .02.

Rick

Hi Rich

In fact, there was development for the Spirio, but they are not on the market yet.

Send me a pm if you want to know the source of the information and what it is.

Take care

Steve

The Paulson deal is an LBO (leverage buy out). That reminds me of the Baldwin Piano LBO that eventually resulted in Bankruptcy. However, there is a difference between Baldwin and Steinway = Baldwin cut back on quality, and moved some production to Mexico. They closed company owned stores, which torpedoed their dominance in major markets. Cost cutting and the resulting lack of quality at Baldwin left room for Yamaha and Kawai to win sales with better quality instruments.

In contrast, Steinway quality seems better - the piano actions are lighter and more responsive, and they have introduced a state of the art player system. An LBO is always risky, but I think there is room in the world market for Steinway to expand it's sales. Financing improvements and balancing debt can be very tricky, but I think that Steinway is a survivor.

Indeed -- With high quality pianos it matters remarkably little whether the OEM is still afloat. If you have a Baldwin or Knabe, today's technicians and rebuilders can get everything they need for it, just like they can with Steinway or Bosendorfer.

Rick, I'm amazed at the number of people who buy a piano based on the label on the fall board. It's also interesting that the player market seems to be a big part of new piano sales. Does anyone actually play anymore?

"which perhaps explains the annual 5 percent price increases !!"

No, they have been doing that forever. I am always amazed at how much the price rises every time I visit Steinway Hall.

FUD. It's a boorish sales "technique."

Steinway is an incredible company with tons of resilience and pride. They're, in a way, a canary to the industry - if they are having problems selling pianos, that's an indicator for the market as a whole.

Someone once told me "the bigger you are, the more people out there try to take a shot at ya"

Bashing a big competitor is a super common a technique in sales.

This whole discussion is silly. Everyone knows Steinway is dying. It's been dying for, what, 163 years now. Its demise is, obviously, imminent.

In fact, it's been dying far longer than most of its competitors have been dying. And, given its history, it may continue to be dying long after some of its competitors have actually died.

ddf

The current price of a 5'1" Steinway S in satin ebony is $63K (plus tax) - and you can pay up to $98K for that same piano in Macassar Ebony. Can't image they are selling a whole bunch of those.

Player piano marketing is not a new thing and, in fact, is a smaller part of the market than when standard pneumatic player systems were the rage. Along with reproducers by Ampico, DuoArt, and others, they were a lion's share of the marketplace before most of us here on PW were born (except for Frank Baxter ).

Having a high tech. player system has been a goal for Steinway for a long time. They have been having discussions with retrofit companies (according to retrofit reps. I know) for years.

I am happy they finally did something. It should be helpful to them.