Who Plays Piano More: Men or Women?

Hey there, welcome back! Guess what? It’s time for us to answer another one of life’s most important questions, who plays piano more: men or women? As we’ve seen previously, our approach to learning piano has evolved over the years, including our approach to who should learn piano. Back in old-timey times, there were activities that were strictly reserved for men or for women– the piano being one of them. Once solely considered a man’s profession (we’re looking at you Mozart and Bach!), the piano has now become an instrument available for everyone to play– men & women, old & young, humans & animals alike. So we wanted to find out, is the piano still a predominantly male activity? Or have times changed? Let’s take a look at the timeline and examine the facts.

1. The Piano’s History is Predominantly Male

Way before feminism became a thing, playing the piano was a right reserved for men. While men of high-status were encouraged to culture themselves by getting university degrees and taking up the piano, women were encouraged to tune up their cooking skills, hone their child-raising abilities and happily complete housework tasks. Obviously, that didn’t leave much time to dedicate to education, so there were simply no women pianists prior to the 20th century. After all, if women would learn piano, then who would make the sandwiches??

Fortunately, times have changed, right ladies?

But still….

2. Today: The Piano Women of Reality & The Piano Men of Virtual-Reality

An interesting phenomenon has begun occurring over the years. While physical piano teachers have become mostly women, virtual piano teachers on platforms such as Youtube and Facebook are mostly men!

Yep, men make the majority of piano tutorials on YouTube. Perhaps their affinity for teaching on these virtual channels rather than in person is because online platforms allow them to go a bit crazier when playing the otherwise classy instrument, and we all know men generally tend to be a bit crazier than the ever calm and graceful women.

 “Why does my piano smell like a foot?“

3. A reality that continues to exist

Though women are now very much on the map, studies show that the music world is still more male than female. According to Ranker.com, not only are there today more male singers than female singers, but also there are approximately 1350 famous male pianists as of 2015, compared to only about 279 famous female pianists. This shows us the trends of the past remain and continue to exist even today.

Okay so who here plays piano? Let’s see a show of hands.

So why is this? Our answer:

Around the seventeenth century, only men could cultivate. Women were sidelined from any development within the society. The world simply didn’t want to see women grow, learn, have fun…

In fact, women didn’t really have access to literature, education or even culture before. They therefore couldn’t learn to play the piano. Only women belonging to the upper middle class could hope to learn to play. This gender-conservatism that is still around in our time is perhaps one of the reasons why the numbers are still not more balanced even today.

But things change, mentalities too, and our world is changing. And despite the uneven numbers, it is clear women have just as much of an interest as men do (if not more) in learning to play piano, at least based on our Youtube channel statistics. 🙂

And of course, statistics aside, another reason why we think the piano may still be more currently popular with the gent’s than with the ladies is because it is obviously THE ULTIMATE WEAPON OF SEDUCTION!!!

Right guys?

So who knows? Maybe times will continue to change and more and more women will begin to showcase their amazing piano talents as well as men. Hopefully OnlinePianist can help make that happen. 😉

So readers, were you surprised by our findings? Do you agree? Let us know in the comments below!