Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Forum withdrawal symptoms

If PW goes to a subscription model I give it about 4 month before it is dead.

Honestly,for a place that touts almost 3,000,000 posts and cannot monetize that into a self sustaining entity deserves to go the way of the dinosaur. I contributed $25 a few months ago. I assume I am not alone. There is nothing here you cannot find on other fora without charge. Talk Classical is one site that has a similar community and apparently no financial problems.

For me, this is not a very lively place. Most folks just want to know what piano or dp to buy and what has a good action. The participants, as in any forum, are regulars who either have a lot of time on their hands or like sharing their opinions and/or knowledge for their own reasons.

I participate a lot more on the audiob.us forum. When Apple stopped its affiliate program the community had an outpouring of concern for the owner and many offered to contribute to pay for the cost. The owner demurred. He is not a rich guy,and the forum does promote his apps in a mild way, but I find in it a genuine sense of community. Perhaps it is because those interested in iOS music production share a real passion in a niche area of incredible technological growth and musical adventure. Here it is rather ho hum and repetitive. All that you find here is rather easy to get elsewhere. And, I imagine, folks will do just that rather than be forced to pay for something of limited value. People won't pay for newspapers. Is this more valuable?

And I guess Frank should remove the "(it's free)" from the header, or just remove the "r" in "free"

So why are you here?

And why compare Talk Classical with Piano World? They're not at all similar. You can't get there what you find here. They're quite different.

Out of respect, I think we should all dial down the speculation about Frank's life and personal motivation for running the forum. Debate the funding model, sure, but I think we've all stepped over the personal line - myself included.

Macmacmac, frankly, I am here less and less. What do you get here that you can’t find anywhere else?
TalkClassical supplies only one aspect of what is offered here, but it does that in spades.

I don’t begrudge anyone making a living, what I am saying is running a forum such as this one will is not the way to make your main income.

As for $72,000 being maybe a barely livable wage, a quick google tells me the average wage in the US last year was $900 a week or $46,800. This site wouldn’t need (or shouldn’t) 44 hrs a week support from the owner.

Many on the average wage will have mortgages to pay, I suspect the owner is retired hence hasn’t.

Again I couldn’t care less if someone wants to make 1/2 a million a year, all I’m saying is that hoping to use a forum as your main source of income isn’t the way you do it.

Forums like this should be run by volunteers who have a passion for pianos.

As a side note, the last 5 years, due to health problems I have got £6,200 a year ($7,768), and last year my wife earned £18k ($22.5k) making a total of £24,200k ($30k), we pay a mortgage etc, so please forgive me if I don’t agree $72000 is maybe a barely livable wage.

I think $72,000 is more than barely livable. Still, that really depends on where and how you live. (I wouldn't want to live that way.)

Anyway ... ando's thought is well taken: I think we should all dial down the speculation about Frank's life ...

Well, I think everyone exercised on this issue should grab a weird weapon and slug it out in an arena, a la Gamesters of Triskelion. It 's the only way.

Anyone else finding that they can't edit their posts?

You can edit for 10 minutes.

That makes sense. Thank you.

I should subscribe.

Question: Last 3 days I've been getting slammed with piano world forum emails about threads. I haven't changed any of my settings. Is anyone else experiencing that?

Agreed. To be honest, I probably would sub as I really like the forum, I just worry it might kill it. But I think everything that could be said has probably been said and everyone will just be repeating what others have already said.

I've lurked this forum for a few years but just registered recently.

I won't comment on Piano World specifically but I've seen other old forums end up in this position. If you're niche (or otherwise unfriendly to ad revenue) the forums usually barely pay for themselves. I've seen a lot of forums shut down simply because the founder/owner got tired of dealing with it (especially if it's not turning a profit and/or their interest in the subject matter has waned).

I will say that it's usually a death spiral once a forum goes private. Most ad revenue completely dries up at that point, not a whole lot of new members join, and old members slowly stop paying their subscriptions.

There's a reason websites like Reddit became so popular (basically free forums) but you're at the mercy of their rules and your subreddit can disappear overnight if they so desire.

I also believe it’s a ‘death spiral’ . However , I have seen a few forums get SOLD and it turned out to be a win, win, win. Meaning Original owner won, buyer won and participants won. Notice I left out the advertisers. Well...that met with mixed results in all 3 situations.

I would like to have the option to sell gear here. Setting up a formal system might be a root canal especially given volumes.

But this could be an honour system with a suggested donation rate on posting and/or sale.

Or maybe UBB has a function which allows only paying members to post in a certain forum-thread-sticky; maybe have some suggested commission rate if something is sold. Visible for everyone to see.

On occasion people post gear for sale on the threads here but that seems to be in bad form for the digital age.

Lots of forums have For Sale subforums. Maybe niche forums live and die by them in fact. It doesn't need to be formal/integrated, just have clear rules and mods to enforce (e.g, no bumping over 5 days, no calling dibs, close your thread when sold). +1 to the idea.

Is that a pay-for-play option? (I presume you're trying to make some money for Frank as a substitute for forum subscriptions?)

Didn't think about it, to be frank.


I just thought it could boost overall revenues a bit. Didn't think of this as a substitute. It could be a nice benefit for members. Whilst there are only a few of us here to swap gear, and some might forget to pay any commissions, anything helps at the margin.

It's not my place to tell Frank how to run his website but if I could make a suggestion it would be to better leverage the exposure those in the piano industry have with targeted audience. For a few years I stopped posting on Pianoworld because I was tired of some posts by a few piano dealers who were more or less just giving veiled sales pitches for the instruments they sold. I wouldn't mind it if it was clear that that was what they were trying to do but I thought it was misleading when it appears in a forum that usually are supposed to be about free exchanges of ideas. That said I wholly support the piano industry and I want all piano dealers to succeed and I'm really worried for them and the state of the piano industry as a whole. Many of them offer valuable and experienced advice on the piano forum and I wouldn't want that to disappear but at the same time I think it would be good to offer them a platform in Pianoworld where they can sell their products without fear of being criticized. I say open up a dealer section where piano dealers from all 50 states can sell their pianos and/or piano related products. More importantly a place where they can openly interact with people who may be interested in buying a piano their state and/or region. This interaction I think would be more valuable as a marketing tool over at static ad that a forum member may or may click or notice. Frank should leverage the exposure dealers or vendors would have to the hundreds of people who flood Pianoworld daily. Of course Frank would have to charge the dealer a subscription fee. Say he charged $1000 a year. One piano sale would easily cover the cost of that subscription price. Imagine if you have at least 1 piano dealer in each state that's $50,000 in Franks pocket right off the bat. Same could be for service side exposure: piano tuners, technicians, teachers.

I think he should keep the forums free and approach dealers in each state the opportunity to use certain sections of Pianoworld as a marketplace in forum-like atmosphere. The main forums are off limits for dealers other than to offer unbiased piano advice as they do now. Forums should exist for the free exchange of ideas but he can offer better exposure to dealers or those in the piano industry (digital/acoustic/ accessories) in another subforum for those who are actively seeking their services or products - but the forum like atmosphere could be more inviting for dealers who want more than just an ad.

I do agree however that maybe there should be a small subscription price for recitals because of storage space that involves.