What is the world’s most popular musical instrument?
What would music be without instruments? That might seem like a silly question to ask since it’s plainly obvious to anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of music that whenever they hear it, there is some kind of instrument being employed—even if that instrument happens to be the human voice.
But with Western appraisals of modern music so often focusing on vocal melody and lyrics, we often lose sight (or sound) of the fact that it’s the instrumental aspects of music that underpin our favourite songs. Someone, several people or perhaps dozens of people at the same time, are applying a skill it took years of dedication to master in producing the sounds we hear, using complex tools carefully designed and crafted to produce precisely those sounds, sometimes via hundreds or even thousands of years of evolution.
Of course, certain musical instruments garner greater recognition than others due to their ubiquity in the recorded music now distributed across the globe and their popularity among players and listeners alike. Determining which instrument is the most popular overall is an almost impossible task, given the several different possible definitions of popularity we can use as forms of measurement.
We could choose the instrument that’s the most listened to, for example, the most played in popular music recordings and live performances. Or the one that’s purchased the most around the world each year. Or just the one that’s most played. It’s safe to assume that this latter option depends on how accessible the instrument is to the greatest number of people and how easy it is to use.
So, what is the easiest instrument to learn?
According to the charitable foundation Save the Music, which was founded by MTV executive John Sykes and focuses on providing a musical education to all, there are five key instruments that fit the bill here. Three of the easiest instruments to play also happen to be the most widely used in modern music recordings: guitar, keyboards (including the piano), and drums.
In fact, the guitar and the drums could both stake a claim for the title of the most used instrument in history. Drums have been played in one form or another across all inhabited continents of the world for millennia, with the oldest appearing in Chinese archaeological records that date back over 7,000 years. Plucked string instruments are much older, still, with 15,000 thousand-year-old cave paintings in France depicting a musical bow. Although the heritage of the guitar itself can only be traced back to around 900 years ago
The other instruments cited by Save the Music among the easiest to play include the ukulele, which offers many of the perks of learning the guitar but with fewer and shorter strings to get your fingers around. And the trusty harmonica, which lacks the need for precision playing and muscle memory required by instruments that rely on finger dexterity.
Those of us who remember early school music lessons might want to make a case for the child-friendly flute commonly known as the recorder, which teachers in many countries seem to agree makes the perfect beginner’s musical instrument. Nothing brings a nursery rhyme to life quite like a room full of six-year-olds struggling their way through finger patterns over five holes of a wooden stick.
And the winner is…
Nostalgia for the recorder just can’t compete with the big guns, though. Nor can the historic credentials of the drum, which now finds itself increasingly replaced by machine-generated equivalents on the world’s most listened-to songs.
If we’re going by sales alone, the title of the most popular musical instrument could well belong to the harmonica, which shifts a whopping three million units per year. Its popularity can be attributed to its portability and affordability, according to the statistics site World Metrics. It can fit snugly in a side pocket while costing one-tenth of a decent guitar on average, as well as being relatively straightforward to play to a basic standard.
On the other hand, if you’re going by playing statistics, the piano – including its digital iterations – is a strong candidate for being more popular than any other instrument. World Metrics estimates that over 50 million people play the piano worldwide, including 34 million in the United States. A 2022 Newsweek survey suggested that 27% of all those playing at least one musical instrument in the United States play the keys in some form.
Yet most of the data brings us back to the most iconic instrument of the last century, with its origins in the earliest beginnings of human civilization. The guitar is the most sold instrument in the world, with combined figures for acoustic and electric variants totalling over 3.8 million sales in 2020. And it’s also the most played, with more than 50 million guitarists around the world and Newsweek’s poll suggesting 38% of American musicians play the instrument.
There’s no getting away from it: the guitar is the undisputed winner of this popularity contest. The piano has certainly given it a good run for its money. But for those trying to play their way into the popular crowd, these guitar masterpieces for beginners are a great place to start.
