Brian Smith wrote in 100818 MMDigest about the difficulties of
finding coin pianos on public display.  He comments that, back in
the 1920s, such instruments were widely available to all people in
many locations.

Just as jukeboxes are frequently seen today in restaurants and so on,
orchestrions were probably equally prolific in the 20s.  Jukeboxes
themselves seem to be on the way out as more and more people can't bear
to be parted from the headphones of their MP3 players; in much the same
way, orchestrions were on the way out once jukeboxes were invented.
Technological advances and businesspeople's desires to immediately have
the newest and latest things mean that there almost certainly won't ever
be a time again when orchestrions are as prolific as they once were.

I respectfully disagree, though, that "mechanical music... is only for
the very rich."  This might apply to owning a very large collection,
but from what I have seen, it is possible to own a mechanical musical
instrument for something less than an arm and a leg.  Certainly
mechanical instruments are not inexpensive, and I'm definitely priced
out of the market while I'm a high school student, but it seems
feasible that one could save for a mechanical instrument the same way
one could save for, say, a new car or a high-definition television.

More importantly, I believe it's still true that one doesn't "have
to be rich to sit there and enjoy the greatest roll by dropping coin
after coin."  It's certainly true that mechanical music has largely
disappeared from our societal consciousness as a whole and that there
are significant problems with the way many people today view mechanical
instruments, but that's another discussion, I think.

There are instruments available in public.  Not as many as I wish there
were, to be sure, but they are there.  It just takes a little luck to
run across them, so it's not as easy for "young [people] with coins to
drop" to find excellent examples as it could be, but it is always
possible that an encounter with just one instrument will be the needed
spark.

Some museums have mechanical instruments which can be played by the
public, not usually in museums dedicated to them.  Therefore it's
possible that many people might come across them by chance and be
interested.  The Wells Auto Museum in Maine, for example, has a great
collection of antique cars as well as of coin-operated pianos and
games.  Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire, better known for its
trained bear shows and railroad, has more than ten instruments
scattered around the property.  This includes some in their entrance
building, gift shop, museums, ice cream parlor, and train station.  In
other words, it's hard to be there and not come across at least one.

The famous and widely-visited Walt Disney World in Florida has a
Seeburg in the main train station at the Magic Kingdom park.  It
doesn't play very strongly and is labeled as a "music box," but that's
also another discussion and at least it's there in such a high-traffic
place.  Knoebels Groves in Pennsylvania, in addition to the rest of its
excellent collection of instruments, has an O-roll piano near its park
history museum.

There are probably several other places where it's possible to stumble
across a mechanical instrument.  I was once told of a pizza parlor in
Arizona with a Wurlitzer theater organ in the dining room.  Apparently
it has "great music" but "lousy pizza."

Just this summer I was at Six Flags America in Prince George's County,
Maryland, and a Six Flags-owned park is probably one of the last places
on Earth I'd look for a mechanical instrument.  When my friend and I
stepped into the Western saloon to use the restroom, though, there was
a coin piano right next to the door.  It didn't play, and the employees
couldn't tell me when it had last worked or anything else about it,
but my point is that if it's possible for an enthusiast to accidentally
run across a mechanical instrument in an unexpected place, it certainly
must be possible for the general public, and maybe that's the best we
can hope for at this time.

I know that often the way I think about mechanical music in American
society tends towards the alarmist, and indeed there is much for us
to be alarmed about: (a) in the many band organs not playing at all
or playing poorly with their carousels; (b) in the general tendency
of people to regard mechanical music as "that Gawd-awful racket," which
is probably the politest of the negative ways I've heard the exquisite
band organ where I work described; (c) in the apparent inability of
many young people to relate to music that doesn't in some way involve
the female anatomy, drugs, and obscenity; and so on.

I do believe, though, that coin-operated instruments are more available
to young people than we often think, even if they're not as widespread
as they were in their golden age.  For sure, as a few of the responses
about recordings of mechanical music have indicated, there's always
YouTube if nothing else.

TJ Fisher
Washington, DC, USA