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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! > How many harmonica players are there?
How many harmonica players are there?
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Philosofy
907 posts
Jun 02, 2019
8:29 AM
Does anyone have an estimate of how many harmonica players there are? I used to think the number was pretty low. I assumed I was probably the best harp player in my town, probably because I was the only one. Then I found one of Filisko's students teaching in my town. OK, so now I'm #2. Then I was introduced to another guy who is an amazing customizer, and has moved from blues to classical chromatic. OK, now I'm #3. Then I met Gerry Hundt. That's 3 AMAZING harp players within ten miles of me.

Now we have Facebook. I swear, lately I've been getting 3 friend requests a day from harp players all over the world. I know its not because I'm famous, but I am Facebook friends with plenty of famous players. I probably have about 600 harmonica Facebook friends, and I've probably only met 100 of them in person.

I love that harmonica players seem to be the friendliest musicians around. But is there any estimate of how many of us there are?
Buzadero
1342 posts
Jun 02, 2019
10:09 AM
Harmonica "players".....

....or people that possess at least one and have moved air through it at some point in their lives?

Personally, I've come across a lot of people that have approached me and referred to themselves as, "I play harmonica too".

There have been a vast volume of the cursed little things sold over the past however long they've been available as an impulse buy


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isaacullah
3284 posts
Jun 02, 2019
10:24 AM
The MBH Facebook group has about 9500 members, and we are adding probably around 50 a week. My estimate is that there are probably about 30,000 ppl world wide who active play or aspire to play the harp at least passably well as a main instrument. Probably closer to a couple million who have a harp to toot in once in a while while they play guitar or something. And several million who have a cheap junker lying around.
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Thievin' Heathen
1136 posts
Jun 02, 2019
2:38 PM
The Hering site claims a Brazilian.
BronzeWailer
2107 posts
Jun 02, 2019
4:04 PM
I heard one fellow refer to someone else in his band as a trombone owner.
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Sarge
724 posts
Jun 02, 2019
4:37 PM
I know I am the only harmonica player in my town. There's 95 people in this town and I know every one of them and none of them play the harmonica!!!
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jbone
2936 posts
Jun 02, 2019
5:00 PM
@Sarge- so would you say there's about 5 to 6 % of the population who play harmonica? In 7 billion that's a lot of players.
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Komuso
814 posts
Jun 02, 2019
10:54 PM
>>The Hering site claims a Brazilian.

Is that like some kind of ultra low profile harp?

>>Market Segmentation

As others have noted what is the definition of a harmonica player? It's a very broad continuum of interest, from the one time tooter and thrown into the draw (but it's still a sale of a harmonica!) to amateur semi-regular noodlers to serious semi-pro musicians (and rack players) to OCD Overblowers to Pros. Not to mention the maintenance/customization ecosystem.

>>Market volume

There's different approaches to sizing it.

You can buy market research reports for thousands of $ (see https://www.orianresearch.com/report/harmonica/715789 ) but I'm unsure of how accurate they are. I think they operate off Units shipped/year, which is a forecast based on previous demand + black magic based on whatever else they can justify. Increased competition from lower cost higher quality Chinese manufacturers the last couple of years must be starting to play havoc with the big 4 manufacturers projections here.

Also, what type pf harmonica and regional preferences comes into play (eg: Tremolo vs diatonic preference in Asia etc)

I saw a high end business school case study from 2012 that claimed Hohner and direct competitors sold 800K units with Hohner share at 75%. The case study was on Marine Band only, but didn't specify what types of harps that figure represented and if it was supposed to be diatonic harps only. I assume it was supposed to be as the case study was a break even analysis to determine production increases and advertising budgets etc.


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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
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Last Edited by Komuso on Jun 02, 2019 11:19 PM
TetonJohn
352 posts
Jun 03, 2019
9:03 AM
There obviously needs to be a harmonica question added to the US Census.
I used to be involved in market research, and I bet there is at least one research company that has conducted sample surveys regarding ownership and use of popular instruments (seems like there are enough big instrument suppliers who would pay for the info).
florida-trader
1431 posts
Jun 03, 2019
10:13 AM
On the inside of some of the old Hohner Harmonica boxes (cases) there is language to the effect of "Hohner proudly employs more than 6,000 craftsman who produce in excess of 20 million harmonicas per year." These are on boxes that are 80-90-100 years old. So, let's do the math.

If the average harmonica player only purchased one harmonica per year, that wouldmean there are (or were) 20 million harmonica players in the world. Most harmonica players have more than one harp, so let's just extend the math a bit.

Avg. Harps Bought Number of Harp Players
1 20,000,000
10 2,000,000
100 200,000
1,000 20,000

There are a couple of assumptions being made in this illustration which are obviously false.

1. All the harmonicas made in a given year are purchased in that same year. We know this is not true. Pluse we know that harmonicas last longer than a year so a player may not need to buy a new harmonica every year.

2. Hohner is the only source of harmonicas. We also know that is not true. There are lots of companies that make harmoincas. Hohner is the biggest but they are not the only one.

If Hohner has been manufacturing 20 million harmonicas per year fro over 100 years, that means they have produced over 2 Billion harmonicas in the past 100 years.

Taking all that into consideration, I am guessing that there are more than 30,000 harmonica players in the world. How good they are is another question. How many harmonica players are there that play professionally and are trying to make a living at it? How many are prficient enough that you would enjoy listening to them? How often does one have to play in order to be considered a "harmonica player"? We can slice and dice this thing a lotof different ways.

My #1 Vice, even bigger than the harmonica, is golf. If you do a google search and pose the question "How many golfers are there in the world?", you instantly get an answer of 60 million. Ask the same question substituing "harmonica players" for golfers and you get no such result. You get a myriad of results including this one which was essentially the same question posted in 2016 here on MBH

https://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/5494563.htm

Facebook and the internet in general are good resources but in my travels I have met lots and lots of harmonica players who are not active on the web.

Final answer, 20 million. It is a great big world out there.



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Tom Halchak
Blue Moon Harmonicas
Blue Moon Harmonicas
Philosofy
908 posts
Jun 03, 2019
11:34 AM
I once asked Drew Lewis of Hohner how much do they estimate their sales come from serious players (ie, Marine Band and better harps), and how much from 'toys', ie Piedmont, ones sold in Cracker Barrell, etc. He (politely) wouldn't tell me.
nacoran
10125 posts
Jun 03, 2019
1:25 PM
I think you need to define the threshold better. How many people have made money at it? My band broke up just as we were trying to make the jump from 'paid in publicity' to actual paychecks. My total income from harmonica is $1 busking (never put down a hat, drunk guy at open mic insisted on paying me), and a couple cases of gifts of harmonica stuff and one harmonica for an honest review. I'm still pretty deep in the hole financially, but I take playing pretty seriously. I've even got a handful of recordings of myself that I don't hate.

I've met lots of guys at open mics and shows who play a bit of harp in a rack with guitar... in fact I'd guess about 1 in 20 guitar players show up with a harp rack at open mic.

I know I have several hobbies that I don't belong to any groups for online. You might be able to do some data analysis by figuring out what percentage of groups people who are online join as a percentage of hobbies they have.

Autotranslation is making it easier for different language groups to communicate. I've seen a pretty big uptick in applications on the FB page from India, Pakistan, Iran, Brazil and China, but most of those people speak at least some English.

If you raise the threshold to 'people who at least occasionally play for other people for the other person's enjoyment, whether it's for pay, or just to put your kid to sleep' I bet the number is pretty huge.

People who have played in a band is probably a smaller group, with people who primarily play harp for their band being even smaller. People who make a living related to harmonica... I wonder if there is census data 'musician/harmonica player' out there.


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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
agarner
53 posts
Jun 03, 2019
2:34 PM
We, the active members of this forum, are the minority of harp players. We actively seek continued information, and I bet we also feel that everyone else probably feels the same. But, for every one of us that is "obsessed" with this tiny instrument, there are countless people who play and don't care about furthering their craft.

With that being said, and I'm gonna contradict myself, I dont know another person that I haven't met through music who plays the harp!!!
WinslowYerxa
1641 posts
Jun 05, 2019
5:55 PM
Th Asia Pacific Harmonica Festival draws over 5,000 players, from nations such as Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, etc.

The World Harmonica Festival in Trossingen, Germany, draws around 2,000.

Most of these are highly accomplished players with the financial resouces to attend. I'm sure many more are out there and can't afford to go even though they are regular players.

The world population is, what, 6 billion? 1/2 of 1 percent would be 30 million.

Restricting a count to only those who play professionally reminds me of a quip Jason Ricci made when receiving SPAH's Bernie Bray Harmonica PLayer of the Year award: "Probably more people have been to the moon than make a living playing the harmonica full time."

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Last Edited by WinslowYerxa on Jun 05, 2019 6:33 PM
Raven
160 posts
Jun 25, 2019
7:54 AM
It's no different than if you asked the question about guitar "players." Who hasn't owned at least one guitar in his lifetime? But how many can make the claim that they are guitar players? That would also depend on your definition of what constitutes a "player" in terms of ability or skill. How many times have we all heard, "My grandfather, father, uncle, etc. used to play harmonica"? When I was just a little boy in my single digits and got my first dollar "C" harp from the local hobby store, I "played" it, but obviously knew absolutely nothing about really "playing" harp, bends, embouchure, etc. And that would go for most instruments as well. I've often heard the debate about who is the greatest guitar player, and you will get many different responses. And, although there will be many responses about who is or was the best harp player, fact is there are many good players, fewer great players, and least of all, phenomenal players. Everyone else could fall under the title of "tinkerer." At the same time, there may be those who have achieved a level of excellence that has never been acknowledged...including members on this forum, simply because they have not had the public exposure or have been content just to entertain themselves or maybe some close friends even though they may be excellent "players." Just owning a customized harp does not make one a better harp player in itself anymore than owning a Stratocaster, telecaster or Les Paul makes one a better guitar player. And then there are those enviable naturally talented prodigies who can pick up an instrument and impress everyone around them with their ability to play. We've all seen those kids on YT or elsewhere with their uncanny talents. Everyone on MBH "plays" the harp, and to many of our friends we could be considered "good" or even "great" players, but how many of us would actually be recognized as "players" by other musicians, by each other or by audiences in general? And it doesn't really matter how much music theory you know or how many scales you can name. What matters is what comes out of our instrument and how that sound is appreciated by others. One of the threads mentioned how Charlie McCoy didn't have any idea what ET or JT was, but who would deny that Charlie qualifies as one of the greats? I've known piano "players" that could read the music and hit the right keys, but totally lacked "soul" in playing because they couldn't "feel" the music. So, the total number of harp players, or any other instrument, will remain undetermined.
nacoran
10136 posts
Jun 25, 2019
11:07 AM
For reference, our sister page on FB added over 300 players last month, and that is down from the month before. We seem to have hit some critical mass level there and have, in general, been growing fairly steadily after just being a small group where members from here could IM each other.

In the next couple weeks we should break the 10K mark, making us the 2nd largest FB harmonica group according to my search. (Harmonica Jam has about 12k, but we seem to be closing on them.)

Our demographics say that of those nearly 10k people over 7k were active last month and there were about 30k posts/interactions.

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Nate
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First Post- May 8, 2009
kudzurunner
6571 posts
Jun 25, 2019
12:56 PM
We had another thread about this a few years back. Greg Heumann estimated 30-50,000.

https://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/board/board_topic/5560960/5494563.htm


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Mirco
618 posts
Jun 25, 2019
7:22 PM
Too many.


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Marc Graci
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Gnarly
2672 posts
Jun 27, 2019
7:02 AM
I notice a lot of the posts on the FB page are from relatively new players.
It takes a while to get comfortable on harp, in my experience. Most folks give up investing any appreciable amount of time.
For a long time I was under the impression that harp was much more popular than I currently believe. I do encourage folks when I talk to them about it. And, I think the harp is more popular in certain other cultures (Asian populations seem to like it better).
There is also the "Grandpa factor", people (women too!) who take up the harmonica when they stop working for a living. I reckon we have to count them too, they buy harmonicas!
I don't see that there is much of a demand for harp players in bands, in the same way that ensembles would add, say, a sax player or keyboard player to augment their numbers (add another person to have to pay).

Last Edited by Gnarly on Jun 27, 2019 7:08 AM
dmitrysbor
154 posts
Jul 09, 2019
8:24 AM
Me. But count as two.
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