How many mandolin players in the world? [Archive]

mobi

Jun-22-2017, 9:46am

Randi Gormley

Jun-22-2017, 10:36am

i think you first have to define "players," no? Do you count people who bought a mandolin 30 years ago and plunked at it once? Or people whose first instrument is mandolin who may be better known for other instruments? I can see endless definition arguments before you'd even begin to figure out how to count.....

Seter

Jun-22-2017, 11:10am

As a cartographer this is an interesting topic to me. It would be interesting to see mandolincafe membership mapped worldwide, normalized by country population. Data can be mapped in other interesting ways too I'm sure.

MikeZito

Jun-22-2017, 11:24am

Unfortunately, I would think that mapping out worldwide Cafe members would be useless to a statistician, simply because (unless I am missing something) 'membership' is limited only to those who can speak English.

Hudmister

Jun-22-2017, 11:40am

How about, how many mandolin players in the USA? Maybe include Canada also. I doubt Mandolin Café membership would be a useful indicator as certainly not all mandolin players are Café members.

Tobin

Jun-22-2017, 12:24pm

An unanswerable question, of course. But maybe we could back into a reasonable estimate or educated guess? Or at least a ballpark range with just enough fuzzy math behind it to satisfy modern journalistic integrity (which is to say, make things up).

Some quick Googling shows that in the US and UK, somewhere around 25% of adults play musical instruments. For a nation of approximately 326 million people, that's about 81.5 million people who play something. When you try to look up statistics on what people play, the mandolin isn't even listed. The vast majority go to piano/keyboard, guitar, etc. My wild guess is that less than one-half of one percent of musical instrument players in the US are mandolin players. That would mean we have somewhere around 400,000 mandolin players in the US. It still seems like a high number, though.

Considering that the US accounts for nearly half of world-wide musical instrument purchases as a whole, and probably 90% of mandolin purchases (yeah, I grabbed that out of thin air), my purely speculative conclusion is that there are somewhere around 450,000 mandolin players world-wide. Tops. A more realistic number would be somewhere around 300,000.

Mike Stewart

Jun-22-2017, 1:33pm

Some quick Googling shows that in the US and UK, somewhere around 25% of adults play musical instruments.

Though I have nothing with which to back up my skepticism, I highly doubt the number is that high. One out of every four adults I know play a musical instrument? Maybe one out of those four might have played an instrument at one time, say, in high school. But one in four play a song, again just making up criteria, once a month or more? I'd bet it's closer to 5%. In other words, amongst the variety of adults that come to my mind, a very few could pick up any instrument of their choice and play a song on it right now, cold. That's what I define as "play (a) musical instrument". Playing oboe in the high school band twenty years ago doesn't count.

Me, I don't really care how many mandolin players there are in the world. I have no plans to start a business catering to mandolin players, so worldwide market is unimportant. As long as quality instruments are available for sale, and I have other musicians to play with once in a while, I don't need safety in numbers. Even if it comes down to Gibson being the only mandolin manufacturer remaining, and they only make one model, as long as that one model is a good one and as long as there's a guitar/banjo/fiddle player who will play with me, I'm good.

Tobin

Jun-22-2017, 2:16pm

Though I have nothing with which to back up my skepticism, I highly doubt the number is that high. One out of every four adults I know play a musical instrument? Maybe one out of those four might have played an instrument at one time, say, in high school. But one in four play a song, again just making up criteria, once a month or more? I'd bet it's closer to 5%.

It really depends on what age group we're talking about, and obviously how we define "playing an instrument". But this source (https://www.statista.com/statistics/381509/share-of-adults-playing-a-musical-instrument-by-age-group-us/) seems to show that it's as high as 20% for younger adults and as low as 7% for older adults. I saw another source which suggested the overall percentage (including adults and children) was 29%. This source (http://gb.abrsm.org/en/making-music/4-the-statistics) says 34% of adults in the UK currently play an instrument. I figured 25% was a ballpark figure for overall numbers, as a percentage of population in the western world. Is it right? I dunno. But I'll bet it's higher than 5%.

MikeZito

Jun-22-2017, 3:10pm

How many of us know somebody who said, 'Yes, I can play the piano, guitar, tuba, etc. - and then you heard them play and quickly realized that they have very little clue of what they are doing? Hence the problem of self-identification that Mike Stewart mentioned.

Tobin

Jun-22-2017, 3:58pm

Being a competent player is a whole different conversation, and is quite subjective. I may not consider a professional mandolinist to be in the same league as a newbie who can't play a chop chord, but I still consider them both players as long as it is something they are actively pursuing.

George R. Lane

Jun-22-2017, 4:31pm

Hopefully enough to drown out all the banjo players.

trabb

Jun-22-2017, 4:46pm

Well I'd like to see this go even further - breakdown of mandola and mandocello players as well. The latter could probably done on a U.S. map with pushpins every few inches apart:)

Folkmusician.com

Jun-22-2017, 4:56pm

I have never seen mandolin data broken out, but it should be easy enough to get an estimate with some research. Since we have statistics for other instruments such as guitar, we could use string sales, web searches, or any guitar stats to get a better idea of mandolin numbers. I like the idea of strings, because that suggests active players as would enrollment for online lessons.

If D'Addario would volunteer some numbers.... :)

I have no doubt that there is a low number of active players. It has declined in the last decade.

Mandobart

Jun-22-2017, 5:11pm

All of them. There are currently no known mandolin players on other worlds. Seriously, a similar question came up on the AGF which led to this answer (https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-in-the-world-play-guitar) (260 million guitar players). If there are as many suggest 100 guitar players for every mandolin player (it takes that many to be heard over all our mandos, which I understand are all cannons and banjo-killers) that means there are 2.6 million mandolin players in the world. Including these folks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mandolinists_(sorted)).

There are 10 mandolin players for every mandola player, and 100 mandolin players for every mandocello player. So there are 260,000 mandola players and only 26,000 mandocellists. So some like me are a crack within a niche I guess.

jaycat

Jun-22-2017, 5:48pm

Enough! Or, too much... as Billy Blake put it.

Seter

Jun-22-2017, 5:50pm

The MandolinCafe staff have made some maps before, I remember seeing one of France and one of India specifically. Obviously they have their caveats etc, but it is a wealth of data that some interesting findings could be gleaned from.

Austin Bob

Jun-22-2017, 6:53pm

I don't know.

JH Murray

Jun-22-2017, 6:57pm

In 2016 2,630,950 guitars were sold in the USA, according to Musictrades.com . 1,498,700 of those were acoustic or a/e. 962,325 were electrics, of which 120k were basses. 2016 was a good year, with sales increasing by 6%.

The Musical Instruments Report found at http://www.mainstreammanagement.com/pdf/musical-instruments.pdf
states that in 2008, Guitars were 84% of all stringed instruments sold in the USA. Other fretted string instruments were 12% of sales, and non-fretted string instruments were 4%.

So if 2.7 million guitars = 84% of the instruments sold, then 380k other fretted instruments were sold.
Most of those will be ukuleles.

This is just a few of the numbers I've been able to gather. How it all comes together, I don't know how different 2008 is from 2016.

JH Murray

Jun-22-2017, 7:45pm

In 2016, 1.4 million ukuleles were sold! These numbers don't jive with the 2008 figures.

mrmando

Jun-22-2017, 8:58pm

Just count all the strings and divide by eight.

Folkmusician.com

Jun-22-2017, 9:10pm

Best selling mandolin on Amazon sells approx 2500 per year.
Best selling guitar 11000.

This doesn't give an accurate view though.

The second best selling guitar, 10k per year.
Third: 7k

Second best selling mandolin 1100
So mandolins taper off very quickly and there are far fewer offerings.

Dagger Gordon

Jun-23-2017, 2:35am

Remember this is an English speaking forum and may not attract mandolinists from other countries.

There are mandolin orchestra in places you might not immediately think of, such as Madeira for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJaINsX_UuI

or Holland
https://www.facebook.com/hetconsort/

And I can think of at least two mandolin festivals in France, although the Lunel oneseems to have stopped now.
http://www.mandopolis.org/
http://www.mandolinesdelunel.com/2015/accueil/

Ivan Kelsall

Jun-23-2017, 3:15am

From George Lane - "Hopefully enough to drown out all the banjo players." You go & stand in the corner right now sir !!.

I s'ppose this could be the dream of some mandolin players !,
Ivan;)
158441

PS - I never did find out who the mandolin player on this LP was - or any of the musicians for that matter !!. The banjo in the middle is Roger Sprung's - but did he play on the LP ???.

Mandoplumb

Jun-23-2017, 10:36am

An unanswerable question, of course. But maybe we could back into a reasonable estimate or educated guess? Or at least a ballpark range with just enough fuzzy math behind it to satisfy modern journalistic integrity (which is to say, make things up).
Some quick Googling shows that in the US and UK, somewhere around 25% of adults play musical instruments. For a nation of approximately 326 million people, that's about 81.5 million people who play something. When you try to look up statistics on what people play, the mandolin isn't even listed. The vast majority go to piano/keyboard, guitar, etc. My wild guess is that less than one-half of one percent of musical instrument players in the US are mandolin players. That would mean we have somewhere around 400,000 mandolin players in the US. It still seems like a high number, though.
Considering that the US accounts for nearly half of world-wide musical instrument purchases as a whole, and probably 90% of mandolin purchases (yeah, I grabbed that
out of thin air), my purely speculative conclusion is that there are somewhere around 450,000 mandolin players world-wide. Tops. A more realistic number would be somewhere around 300,000.

Tobin, I like the way you did this, very scientific, mathematically arrived at 450,000 then decided that was too high pulled 300,000 out if the air and went with it. Do you write for newspapers?

Tobin

Jun-23-2017, 11:10am

Tobin, I like the way you did this, very scientific, mathematically arrived at 450,000 then decided that was too high pulled 300,000 out if the air and went with it. Do you write for newspapers?
Hey, I did warn you what I was going to do in my first paragraph!

fatt-dad

Jun-23-2017, 12:56pm

this web site has 50,000 members. Some of us are very passionate amateurs. Some of us are members, 'cause we want to know what to do with Grandpa's old Gibson. Even with 50,000 members that actually play, it's a snapshot of the the overall population who play. I mean after all, it's a forum in English!

If the actual body of pickers were four-fold the 'cafe's membership that'd return 200,000, eh?

I'd expect Tobin's approach is equally scientific?

f-d

JeffD

Jun-23-2017, 1:14pm

How many mandolin players in the world?

Most of them I would bet. Some few are out of this world.

f5loar

Jun-26-2017, 1:29am

Hard to get a number there but I've often wondered who is buying all these mandolins assuming they are becoming mandolin players. There is a lot of independent makers putting out 10 to 100 per year per maker. Bigger companies likely doubling that figure. Now add in the imports coming in a a triple rate of manufacture per company. That's a lot of mandolins assuming they eventually get sold. Add in the 1000's that suffer MAS and own 2 to 10 mandolins. 1000's that own 10 to 25 mandolins and those few hundreds that own 25 to 100 mandolins. 300,000 mandolin pickers world wide sounds possible.

JeffD

Jun-26-2017, 12:13pm

Tobin

Jun-26-2017, 1:14pm

I wonder. Have you included bowl back players in your estimating?

I have often thought that world wide over half of the mandolin players are bowl back players. Likely well over half. If we stick to bowls that are clearly mandolin family, (so include things like liuto canabile, but perhaps exclude things like the Greek bouzouki, lute, oud, theorbo), I wonder if the numbers might be higher.
I have no doubt that the majority of non-US mandolin players are bowlback players. But I don't think their overall numbers are very high. It is a quaint folk instrument that hasn't (to my knowledge) had any popular resurgence in modern times.

If bowlback players were such a large market, equal to or greater than Gibson-style mandolin players, why aren't there more modern bowlbacks being made? I would expect the Asian manufacturers to be churning them out at the same levels as F-styles. Where are they?

Dagger Gordon

Jun-27-2017, 3:34am

I have no doubt that the majority of non-US mandolin players are bowlback players.

I'm not sure on what basis you say that, or indeed who exactly you are thinking of.
You don't see many bowl-backs nowadays in Scotland or Ireland, for example.

And why do you think people from other countries would not be playing Asian-made flat back mandolins?

Here is a nice flatback made by a man in Crete which was apparently made for someone in Singapore!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7dHftWbOSU

You will also note that there are various instruments hanging on the wall, including at least one bowlback mandolin. Crete is somewhere where there are a lot of round back instruments, particularly the lauto which is larger than the mandolin, but it seems to me that both flat and bowl back mandolins are found there.

mobi

Jun-27-2017, 3:37am

I have no doubt that the majority of non-US mandolin players are bowlback players.

Beg to differ. I have been to few mandolin shops in UK, Italy, Germany and they are full of flat back mandolins!

JeffD

Jun-27-2017, 10:08am

I wonder about that. Of course the problem is selective exposure. Most of the non-US mandolin players I have heard or seen or watched have been classical players, and so the bowl predominates.

Billkwando

Jun-27-2017, 10:19am

It is a quaint folk instrument that hasn't (to my knowledge) had any popular resurgence in modern times.

Does Losing My Religion count? ;)

JeffD

Jun-27-2017, 10:28am

It is a quaint folk instrument that hasn't (to my knowledge) had any popular resurgence in modern times.

You mean like the giant resurgence in other mandolins?

Lets get some perspective. Lets assume the estimate of 300,000 people is accurate. If a certain television show were only watched only by 300,000 people world wide, the chances are you and I would have never heard of it. There are delicacies eaten by more than 300,000 people world wide that we have never heard of and will never get to try. 300,000 would be great attendance for a single Broadway Musical, in a single theater, in its first season. A musical that most of us never heard of.

In my regular job I have been doing some work with extreme vacuums, very small numbers of molecules in relatively large spaces. At those small numbers the physics really seems kind of weird, because of what I am used to in the macroscopic dense stuff filled world. I think the same is true with mandolins. All the mental tools we use for discerning cultural trends and estimating are suspect when dealing with such low numbers.

Like we say here at home, three mandolin players can't meet at the same venue, because if some tragedy were to happen it would wipe out over half the mandolin players we know.

Tobin

Jun-27-2017, 12:22pm

Does Losing My Religion count? ;)

Did it spur some sort of bowlback revival that none of us have ever heard of?

I just did a quick Google search for that one, and pretty much everybody that is playing it is doing it on a modern (non-bowlback) mandolin. It may have helped with mandolin popularity in general, but since my comment that you were responding to was specific to bowlbacks, I don't see any evidence that it did anything for bowlback popularity.

I suppose I could be way off on Europeans playing bowlbacks. I was trying to account for all the traditional bowlbacks that are still out there from centuries past, being played for traditional music, and not necessarily tying it to recent sales of new mandolins. Even if it's not classical music, it seems that most of the videos I've seen from Eastern Europe, as well as portions of Western Europe (Italy, mainly) are bowlbacks. I admit, though, that it's not my focus and selective exposure (like Jeff said) is at play. It could very well be that flatbacks are more popular. I really wouldn't know how to get a handle on the real numbers - this is all guesswork, remember?

Billkwando

Jun-27-2017, 12:33pm

Did it spur some sort of bowlback revival that none of us have ever heard of?

Ah, yes! You were talking about bowlbacks, but when you said, "It is a quaint folk instrument that hasn't (to my knowledge) had any popular resurgence in modern times." I didn't realize you were classifying the bowlback as a different instrument, partially because the thread as a whole is about mandolins in general, and partially because it really isn't. :)

My mistake.

Dr H

Jun-27-2017, 4:41pm

Has there been any statistics collected on numbers?

Of course it is impossible to count the numbers but it would be interesting to see some numbers may be broken down by country, region etc.

The stats of mandolin sales can be useful (if available).

:whistling:

There's a census coming up in the US in about 3 years. Contact the Census Bureau, and maybe you can get them to include "mandolin" on their forms, perhaps as an ethnicity. ;)

Dr H

Jun-27-2017, 4:44pm

my purely speculative conclusion is that there are somewhere around 450,000 mandolin players world-wide. Tops. A more realistic number would be somewhere around 300,000.

Y'know... That's almost the population of Iceland.

Shouldn't we have our own country? :mandosmiley:

allenhopkins

Jun-27-2017, 4:50pm

Five -- one to hold the light bulb, four to rotate the ladder...

Oh wait, that's another topic altogether.

Dr H

Jun-27-2017, 5:03pm

Has there been any statistics collected on numbers?

Of course it is impossible to count the numbers but it would be interesting to see some numbers may be broken down by country, region etc.

The stats of mandolin sales can be useful (if available).

:whistling:

Now that I think about it, the answer to that depends on what a 'mandolin' is (https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?132740-When-is-a-quot-mandolin-quot). :grin:

Bertram Henze

Jun-28-2017, 1:25am

What do you mean, "the world"?
This planet?
Milky Way?
Local Group?
Laniakea?

MandoGDAE

Jun-28-2017, 5:18am

I happen to personally know all the mandolin players in the world. There are 312,842.

David Lewis

Jun-28-2017, 7:16am

We've had two very reasonable figures. 3000000 and 2.5 million.

I should think halfway between and then minus 200000. So, around 10000000

This would include those who bought mandolin, played it twice and claim to play, those who don't own one, but have played one because they think it's a little guitar as well as more serious players.

Still seems a bit high...

Bren

Jun-28-2017, 9:00am

Just count all the strings and divide by eight.

Then multiply by 3 because MAS.

So the answer is 3/8.

mandroid

Jun-29-2017, 9:48am

42

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galax y#Answer_to_the_Ultimate_Question_of_Life.2C_the_U niverse.2C_and_Everything_.2842.29

Tom C

Jun-29-2017, 12:19pm

Well, there's thirteen hundred and fifty two Guitar pickers in Nashville...When Nashville Cats was written.
What was the ratio of guitar pickers there to rest of the world?
What was the ratio of mando players to guitar players?
How many guitar players today?
You can multiply by a factor of how more or less the mando has become popular
Take that ratio and multiply to get mando players.

dwc

Jun-29-2017, 12:37pm

Do we have an estimate for how many guitar players there are in the world? If so, and if we make the following assumption, "The ratio of the number of musicians that join the dominant musical forum for that instrument relative to the number of total players of that instrument worldwide remains constant irrespective of the instrument," then we can use the number of guitarists in the world, the membership at AGF and the membership here to calculate the total number of mandolinists in the world. But that requires a pretty big assumption.

JeffD

Jun-29-2017, 5:28pm

We've had two very reasonable figures. 3000000 and 2.5 million.

For perspective, I have seen estimates of the number of guitar players from 50 million to 250 million. And one estimate I saw claimed over a billion.

Tobin

Jun-30-2017, 6:56am