How COVID-19 Impacted Musical Instrument Sales Online

Ahead of “Buy a Musical Instrument Day” on May 22, the data science team at Pattern, a global ecommerce company, tracked consumer demand (or the number of people shopping for a given item during a given period) for musical instruments and accessories on Amazon during every day of 2019 and 2020 to understand how the pandemic has driven consumers to pick up a new hobby or altered preferences for how to pursue music. Here’s what they found:

Early in the pandemic

·      No instrument saw a bigger surge in year-over-year demand during the first months of the pandemic than ukuleles (+66%). Guitars (+47%), pianos/keyboards (+32%), harps (+28%), and flutes (+27%) round out the top five.

·      Conversely, trombones and violas saw the largest negative shifts in year-over-year demand during the beginning of the pandemic, each down -27% compared to March-April 2019.

As the pandemic wore on

·      Looking at 2020 as a whole, guitars saw the biggest lift in total demand compared to 2019 (+21%), followed by pianos/guitars (+12%), ukuleles (+11%), harps (8%), and drums (+5%).

·      Conversely, trombones (-48%), trumpets (-35%), clarinets (-30%), oboes (-28%), and saxophones (-27%) saw significant decreases in total demand in 2020 compared to 2019, most likely due to many k-12 students opting out of band and orchestra while social distancing measures are in place.