Instrument Selection

Every three years, NAMM hires Gallop to conduct a telephone survey of American households. I can't find the 2006 survey online, but the 2003 survey concluded that

1. 64% of instrumental music-makers started studying music when they were 5-11 years old; 18% starting 12-14; 7% 15-18; and 6% after 18.


2. 75% chose for themselves the instrument that they learned to play, with 15% making the decision jointly with parents and 10% having the choice of instrument made by the parent alone.


3. 30% took lessons at school, 26% took private lessons, and 22% taught themselves. The “taught themselves” percentage has risen over time (and may be rising much faster now due to the Internet). Boys teach themselves three times as often as girls do.

It is illuminating to make a chart of the ages at which music-makers started studying music (below).


The chart shows the percentage of instrumental music-makers who started learning music at each given age (in red) and the culumative total up to that age (in green).

The ages 5-11 are clearly critical. 69% of people who will ever learn to play an instrument have started learning by the end of their 11th year, and 87% by the end of their 14th year. Clearly, if I want to sell a lot of Thummers, I need to *eventually* meet the needs of very young students (although it may not be efficient to target them first).

NAMM’s surveys don’t ask what instrument is played, or why that particular instrument was chosen. There is little research into the factors which affect musical instrument choice among beginners, and that limited research tends to constrain the available options to band & orchestra instruments. A better understanding the factors affecting instrument-selection could suggest opportunities for improving the Thummer such that it would consistently win this selectrion process.

NAMM's survey data suggest that

• Ensuring that the Thummer meets the needs of beginners aged 5-11 is critical to its long-term success;


• We can emphasize self-teaching (online) initially, but will need to penetrate the private lesson and school-based lesson channels, also, to maximize Thummer sales;


• The ability of a given instrument to help a teenage boy “get chicks” is not sufficient, in itself, to maximize Thummer sales, as (i) it doesn’t help sell instruments to girls, and (ii) more than 80% of music-makers have already selected their instrument before their mid-teens, leaving at most 20% to be affected by this benefit.

People usually mention the "get chicks" factor with regard to the guitar -- but history suggests that jazz instrumentalists did pretty well in that regard, too, so there appears to be more to that benefit than just instrument choice.

Why the Thummer Will Succeed

Proposed new musical instruments tend to fail in the marketplace because:

1. they have to be much better – not just slightly better – than traditional instruments in at least two or three different ways that consumers care about, and
2. they are sold through a traditional bricks & mortar distribution channel, which favors "me-too" products over radically different designs.

The Thummer and Thumtronics' sales model solve both problems.

1. The Thummer is WAY Better

• The Thummer allows novices to learn music much faster – at least three time faster, and (with the ThumMusic System) perhaps ten times faster – than traditional instruments.
• The Thummer is has far more expressive power than any other instrument, due to its thumb-operated joysticks and internal motion sensors. With these, musicians can control up to ten different independent musical variables simultaneously while playing, instead of the two or three variables available in most traditional musical instruments.
• The Thummer offers artists the opportunity to explore vast new creative frontiers through its novel support for Dynamic Tuning.
• The Thummer is tiny – potentially even pocket-sized.
• The Thummer can be very affordable, due to its being made from standard, off-the-shelf consumer electronics components.

Simple, Powerful, Portable, & Affordable – these are the keys to success in ANY market. That’s why the Thummer can – and will – succeed.

2. The Thummer Has Low Inventory and Distribution Costs

Most musical instruments are large, heavy things, made from special-purpose components. For example, my Roland ep-97 digital piano weighs 32 pounds, which means that it would cost over $105 to ship it across the USA overnight. The Thummer, on the other hand, weighs about a pound, and would cost only a quarter as much to ship. Furthermore, the Thummer occupies only about a tenth of the volume of the ep-97, reducing my inventory and bulk shipping costs accordingly. Keeping inventory and distribution costs low is essential for products that are likely to start out as low-volume niche products before they climb up the Long Tail up into the mainstream. Most proposed new musical instruments are simply too big, too heavy, and too expensive to be profitable in a small niche, so they never get the opportunity to climb out into the mainstream. The Thummer can survive profitably as a niche product while musicians and music educators learn to exploit its revolutionary strengths. World-changing revolutions take time, and the Thummer can be profitable throughout.

That's why the Thummer will succeed: because it addresses both the product issues and the business process issues that have led other new musical instruments to fail.