Contents
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Purchase frequency and market volume
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Instrument-family choices
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Piano and keyboard patterns
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Age of secondhand instruments
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Purchase channels
- Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Guitar resale and marketplace activity
- Sources
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Purchase frequency and market volume
A 2022 French consumer study offers two useful but different views of secondhand instrument buying: an estimate of market activity in one calendar year and a survey of musicians’ reported behavior over a longer period. They should not be treated as interchangeable. The market estimate counts instruments, while the survey reports the share of respondents who recalled making a purchase.
Xerfi estimated that about 554,400 used instruments were purchased in France in 2021. The same market summary put total instruments bought or rented at approximately 1.68 million: about 1.008 million bought new and 118,000 rented. These are reconstructed market estimates, not a count of survey respondents or a worldwide total. Accessories are outside the stated instrument count. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, pp. 28–30
In the accompanying survey, 26% of French musician respondents said they had bought a used instrument during the five years before the survey, fielded October 7 to November 2, 2022. The share was 31% among respondents aged 25–34. Respondents could report multiple kinds of behavior, so these percentages are person-level reports of having made a purchase, not the share of all transactions that were used. The age-group difference describes this survey; it does not establish why younger respondents reported used purchases more often.
For context, 71% said they had made at least one instrument purchase or rental during the five-year period. Among respondents with an instrument-related expenditure, the reported average was 1.1 expenditures, combining new purchases, used purchases, and rentals. Neither figure isolates secondhand buying, but both show why the 26% used-purchase result should be read as one behavior within a broader, relatively infrequent purchase-and-rental pattern. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 29
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Instrument-family choices
Among French respondents reporting used purchases in the five-year lookback, pianos and organs were the most frequently selected family, at 37%. Plucked-string instruments followed at 29%. The other reported shares were 15% for wind instruments, 12% for electronic instruments, 10% for drums and percussion, 8% for DJ equipment, 7% for studio or home-studio equipment, 6% for accordions, and 4% for bowed strings.
These are multiple-response shares: a respondent who bought more than one kind of instrument could select multiple families. They do not add up to a market share and do not show the number of units sold. The result is still a useful indication of which categories appeared most often in the survey’s used-purchase reports. Pianos and organs led the list by eight percentage points over plucked strings. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 31
The family figures also help put keyboard-specific data in context. In a separate question covering new and used purchases together, 38% of respondents who had purchased an instrument reported buying a piano or organ. That 38% is not a secondhand-only figure, and its denominator differs from the used-family breakdown. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 32
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Piano and keyboard patterns
The CSFI study’s piano-and-organ annex reports that 27% of purchase acts by piano and organ players were for used instruments, compared with 65% for new instruments. These are shares of purchase acts within the annex’s five-year frame. The report notes that respondents could make several purchase or rental acts, so the percentages should not be recast as exclusive shares of individual players. The remaining activity may include rentals or other categories shown in the study. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 66
For electronic-instrument players, the annex assigns 30% of purchase acts to used instruments. That is higher than the 27% reported for piano and organ purchase acts, but it is a comparison between instrument-player groups, not a direct estimate of the share of all used piano purchases or digital-piano purchases. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, pp. 66, 72
The survey also reports price bands for digital-piano purchases, without specifying whether an instrument was new or used. Among respondents who bought a digital piano during the five-year lookback, 62% reported paying less than €700; 29% reported €701–€1,500; 8% reported €1,501–€5,000; and 1% reported more than €5,000. These amounts describe all qualifying digital-piano purchases in the survey, not secondhand prices specifically. They therefore provide a broad spending context, but cannot be used to infer the typical price of a used digital piano. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 33
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Age of secondhand instruments
Secondhand does not necessarily mean vintage. Among French respondents who bought used instruments during the five years before the 2022 survey, 38% reported buying an instrument less than five years old, while 42% reported one aged five to nine years. Another 16% reported an instrument aged 10–19 years, and 4% reported one at least 20 years old. The figures cover instrument families collectively; they do not tell us how age varied for digital pianos, acoustic pianos, or any other single category. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 44
The aggregate pattern is concentrated in instruments under ten years old: 80% fall into the two youngest bands. A separate observation for bowed-string musicians points to a different age profile: instruments more than ten years old represented 35% of secondhand purchases in that group. The study discusses the long lifespans of some bowed-string instruments in this context. That category-specific result should not be generalized to the entire secondhand market or to pianos. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 44
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Purchase channels
The route to purchase varies by instrument family. In the CSFI summary’s channel table, private individuals accounted for 7% of piano and organ purchases and 11% of plucked-string purchases. The private-individual share was 7% for wind instruments, 12% for drums and percussion, 8% for accordions, and 17% for bowed strings. Electronic instruments registered 5%, DJ equipment 9%, and studio or home-studio equipment 11% through private individuals.
These figures describe the private-individual channel, not all used purchases: used instruments can also be sold through shops and online retailers. The table’s other channel categories include physical stores, online sales, and cultural superstores. Thus, the 7% figure for pianos and organs does not mean that only 7% were secondhand, just as the 17% for bowed strings does not establish the total used share. It indicates where purchases were made in the study’s channel classification. CSFI consumer study summary, p. 2
A separate online-shopping question found that 9% of respondents who bought an instrument online in the five-year period used a specialist secondhand site. In the same online-purchaser group, 47% used a specialist instrument site, 34% a generalist site, and 10% a manufacturer or artisan site. These are online channel choices among online buyers, not percentages of all instrument purchases; the categories reflect the study’s reported site types. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 43
For prospective purchases, 13% of French respondents with an instrument-purchase project named a private individual as a possible channel. This concerns intentions for the two years following the 2022 survey, not completed sales. Its value is therefore a forward-looking indicator of stated plans, distinct from the retrospective purchase and channel results above. CSFI/Xerfi consumer study, p. 64
Used musical instrument purchases statistics: Guitar resale and marketplace activity
Guitar data offers a narrower view of online resale beyond the French survey. NAMM’s 2024 Global Report said that Reverb reported a 35% increase in used-instrument sales on its online marketplace in 2023. The cited sentence does not specify the comparison period, so it should not be presented as a year-over-year increase or taken as a measure of the entire used-instrument market. It is a platform-reported sales change relayed in NAMM’s report. 2024 NAMM Global Report, p. 11
NAMM also described the volume of used guitars changing hands as difficult to gauge. It suggested that, by unit volume, used guitars could possibly reach 50%–75% of new-guitar sales. This is explicitly tentative rather than a measured count. In its 2025 report, NAMM stated that consumers could browse 150,000 guitars listed on eBay and Reverb on any given day. That is a point-in-time listing estimate across two platforms, not the number sold or the number of unique instruments transacted. 2024 NAMM Global Report, p. 11; 2025 NAMM Global Report, p. 12
A concrete sales ranking comes from Reverb’s list of best-selling used electric guitars in 2024, ranked by total order count. The Gibson Les Paul Standard ’60s placed fifth, while the Fender American Standard Stratocaster (2008–16) ranked ninth. These positions show that both models appeared among the platform’s top used electric-guitar sellers for the year; they do not reveal unit counts, prices, or their share of the total guitar resale market. Reverb, “The Best-Selling Guitars of 2024”