The player piano is one of those things that wasn't invented by any
one individual.  It was the culmination of decades of progress by
small steps.  A precis of this can be found on the Player Piano Group
web site, http://www.playerpianogroup.org.uk/, under the 'Player
History' section which looks at the developments decade by decade.

Consider a few key dates:

Mid-1850s, foundation of many American piano firms by German emigres.

1876 First major demonstration of mechanical music (mainly in the form
of reed organs) at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

1891 First substantial player piano, the Eriol, launched in the USA
by Theodore Brown.  Failed commercially.

1897 Invention of the 'Pianola' by Edwin Votey.

1905 Launch of the self-playing 'Mignon' system by Edwin Welte
in Germany.

1914 Launch of rival self-playing 'Ampico' and 'Duo-Art' systems
in the USA.

1923 56% of all pianos sold in the USA contained player devices
(195,000 players, 347,000 pianos in total).

1929 Market of player pianos drops 90% from peak (37,000 players,
131,000 pianos).

The historical drive to create mechanical music, and pianos, can be
traced to Germany, and is a massive subject.  American inventors were
working in this area from the 1860s.  However, the key to the huge
domestic sales of mechanical music wasn't really the invention of these
instruments.  Many equally good inventions failed to become great hits.
It was convincing the public that they wanted to have them that did the
trick - so we really need to thank the marketing men as well.

America was ripe for this by the time, the rise of widespread domestic
wealth over the preceding two or three decades being phenomenal as well
illustrated by Dan Wilson.  Things such as increased leisure time and
better housing also counted.  The country was ready for the flowering
of a consumer culture.

As a specific example, consider the Aeolian Company and the Pianola.
Aeolian started in 1878 as a small shop retailing mechanical reed
organs.  By the late 1890s it had grown substantially by selling
highly-priced goods to the very rich.  (Its pipe organs were about
twice the price of their more-established rivals, but then they had the
Vanderbilts as customers so who was counting?!)  The son of the boss
was looking for a project of his own.  This was Harry B Tremaine, and
the project he chose was the Pianola, invented by Edwin Votey, whose
Votey Organ Company supplied Aeolian.

Substantial cash was needed for advertising and production facilities,
and this came from one of their pipe organ customers, Frederick Bourne.
He was president of the Singer (Sewing Machine) Manufacturing Company,
themselves no mean hand at creating a new market from scratch.  Between
1900 and 1910 Bourne invested several million dollars which were used
to buy piano manufacturers and build factories; he also built Aeolian
Hall in New York which he leased to Aeolian.

I'm sure I've read somewhere that by 1910 Aeolian had more capital
invested than the entire American piano industry of 10 or 15 years
before.  The advertising campaign for the Pianola is still used as a
textbook example, using unheard of things such as 4-page full-colour
advertising.

The early years of advertising were relentless on one theme, an
aspirational one, that by purchasing a Pianola you would participate
in the sophisticated and worthy world of music, without having to spend
years learning the technique of playing the piano.  Player pianos were
frequently sold on hire-purchase schemes (this itself being a Singer
invention) and this meant that even those with a small disposable
income could buy into the dream.

The aspiration to be musical can be traced through books such as 'The
piano in America' by Craig Roell.  The player piano's success was a
commercial one in matching technology to social conditions (just as was
Sony's Walkman -- neither Pianola or Walkman were being clamoured for
when they were launched).

Sadly, people found out that it's quite difficult to play the Pianola
'artistically', and then as now the vast majority of owners just
thumped away with little regard to any musical sensibility, or at least
with little effort put in to achieve musicality.  Instead the market
swung toward music that sounded acceptable played in the familiar
'mechanical' manner.  The world of popular music moved that way as
well, so the player piano fitted in very well with the ragtime and
fox-trot eras.

The player piano was a huge success because it matched the spirit of
the age.  Advertising swung to the very opposite tack, with claims such
as 'so easy a baby could play it'.  In the UK a different clientele and
different social conditions applied and classical music survived much
longer.

One vital decision made in 1908 probably guaranteed the widespread
success of the player piano.  This was agreement of a standard format
for 88-note piano rolls.  Any roll made by any maker could be used on
any machine, worldwide.  Without this agreement the market would have
been fractured and far, far smaller.  Coming so early in the era of
domestic technology this was extraordinary: even modern companies well
aware of the need for standards have great difficulty in actually
agreeing them.

The need for truly artistic music (for which read classical) was
satisfied by the self-playing 'reproducing' piano that you just
switched on and received a fully-nuanced reproduction of a great
artist's performance.  Then as now these instruments (when working
well) are uncanny and quite unsettling for newcomers to encounter.
The 10 year delay between Welte and any competitors shows just how
unprepared the American manufacturers were for such a development.
A niche-interest spin-off from these is a surprisingly large library
of high-quality recordings of the greatest pianists of the day, again
achieved by application of large doses of cash (Prokofieff got $1000
per recording from Aeolian).

The amplified radio was the killer of the player piano.  It was much
cheaper, provided the very latest music, and you could upgrade radios
every year or two in a way that was unaffordable with a piano.  The
player piano market was already dead when the depression came (an 80%
drop in sales from 1923 to 1929).  The depression guaranteed that the
market was flooded with cheap repossessed hire-purchase instruments.

This was the great mistake of the player manufactures: they had quite
accurately identified the presence of a modern consumer market, but
proceeded to fill it with top-quality products with a life that could
be measured in decades.  Later makers sold throw-away goods to keep the
buyers coming back.

The true lasting social impact of the player piano?  A generation that
didn't learn to play the piano, with the consequent vanishing of the
piano as a mandatory domestic accessory.  Maybe the filling of the gap
with the easy-to-play guitar?  No, that's probably fanciful.  Most of
what happened would have happened anyway.

There's still a modern market for automated piano music, and Yamaha
have shipped hundreds of thousands of Disklaviers worldwide over the
last 20 years, but nobody discusses them as a social phenomenon!

Julian Dyer
London, England.