Disklavier

Aaron,

Thanks for spearheading this effort. As a MKII DKG owner, one of my “buy” factors was a promise that my piano would never go out of date –never become obsolete (at least not in a reasonable time period). Yet for me, my piano is resolutely stuck with 80’s/90’s tech. For many of us, a purchase of this size was not a casual extravagance, rather a once in a lifetime effort to buy something of supreme quality, enjoyment and something to pass down to younger generations.

I will also say with diminishing software selection, use of the Disklavier playback features represent less than 5% of my piano use – whereas when newer, it was 80%. Lastly, I have not made the jump to the DKC 850 because it needs an upgrade too.

Let’s hope that Yamaha takes this to heart and addresses the needs of us 60,000 North American Disklavier owners. I was surprised by that number. Shall we start a twitter campaign??

Many thanks

Rich Freeman

From: <disklavier@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of "azornes@yahoo.com [disklavier]" <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
Reply-To: <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Monday, February 13, 2017 at 6:41 PM
To: <disklavier@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [disklavier] DISKLAVIER owner survey - ENSPIRE features for pre-2016 DISKLAVIERS?

Our goal is provide Yamaha USA (and ourselves) evidence of market demand for upgrade path for pre-2016 Disklavier owners to benefit from certain "ENSPIRE" generation features.

To do so, we have self-organized ourselves to survey a broad audience of the estimated 60,000 North American Disklavier owners as to which "ENSPIRE" features and at which price point they aspire to. Our goal is 300+ completed surveys from the estimated 3,600 members of the Yahoo group Disklavier Users Group ... this will provide a statistically valid sample.

Take the 5-10 minute multiple choice survey --> http://0036f23.netsolhost.com/dk_owner_survey_1q2017.htm

Friday 24-Feb-2017 is our deadline for all completed surveys … results will be posted in this Yahoo User group shortly thereafter

TELL YAMAHA AND THE WORLD *WHAT* YOU WANT IN YOUR DISKLAVIER & HOW *MUCH* YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY FOR INDIVIDUAL ENSPIRE FEATURES

BACKSTORY:

• I attended NAMM 2017 in Anaheim this January and spoke with several Yamaha product managers.
• One of the pieces of info gleaned is that there are 60,000 DK owners in North America.
• And that the bulk of these are Mark II/III who purchased theirs prior to the great financial crisis of 2008-2010.
• Certain Yamaha team members expressed their belief that the recession crushed demand for the Mark IV.
• As a result there is a huge BELL CURVE effect (bubble) of Mark II/III owners whom Yamaha somewhat targeted with the DKC-850 add-on hardware upgrade to give owners some of the E3 series capabilities (more memory, CD player, Piano Radio/TV).
• Meanwhile 40,000-50,000 or more Mark II/III owners spent the equivalent of $15,000-$80,000 and now have outdated, non-upgradable-to-ENSPIRE-features excellent pianos in our homes and businesses.
• Moreover = NONE of the hundreds or thousands in $’s of PianoSoft titles you have purchased can play on the NEW ENSPIRE systems (!) if you go that route and buy the new generation pianos … meaning all the money and effort in tracking the corresponding AUDIO CDs to match the Smart PianoSoft MIDI collections is useless for the ENSPIRE (will NOT play) … we have good authoritative sources tell us that Yamaha is currently converting that old/pre-2016 “PianoSoft + Audio” library to this new 2016/17 “PianoSoft Audio” format, but it’s a slow process … hence the dearth of titles currently available for ENSPIRE … very very few with exception of5-10 weekly individual 2016-17 pop titles
• One of the key missing features available only to ENSPIRE is the AUDIO CD PLAYER firmware that the ENSPIRE platform has allowing it to read the NEW PianoSoft Audio format (stereo, MP3) audio disks/downloads.
• Our premise: if 40,000-50,000 owners cannot afford to pay $20,000-$120,000 to acquire *new* ENSPIRE pianos, it would not cannibalize that NEW market Yamaha is chasing to offer upgrade path to existing owners to add on either NEW CD player or FIRMWARE upgrade to existing AUDIO CD player to allow PianoSoft 2017-new format to be played.
• Of course, there is more to it than just a firmware upgrade because the non-ENSPIRE systems also can NOT recognize/stream the TWO new ENSPIRE-specific channels on Piano Radio.

ACTION:

• Let’s send some data to YAMAHA to have them at least explain WHY to us 10’s of thousands of existing happy customers WHY we cannot get certain features as upgrade to DKC-850, E3, and Mark IV
• Let’s also capture some market data that can be extrapolated to the broader market about the residual market for Smart PianoSoft titles (perhaps we can get them to release the 150 or so that were recorded but never made it into production as FDs)
• Let’s also capture the possible market spend/size for more music for the non-ENSPIRE family (that is, us 60,000-80,000 North American Disklavier owners) ... such market data may encourage “PG Software” and “Player Piano CDs & Floppies” to invest into generating MORE and NEW titles for our market
• To help drive survey participation, we will provide a ZIP file of Disklavier sampler music to all survey respondents

With all that in mind, can you please

1. Take the 5-10 minute multiple choice survey --> http://0036f23.netsolhost.com/dk_owner_survey_1q2017.htm
2. Give us your completed survey by Friday 24-Feb-2017
3. If for any reason, the survey fails to SAVE (ISP overload, other ISP wind storms) then simply COPY ALL & PASTE your survey response and send via email to aaron.zornes@gmail.com

Thanks, fellow Disklavier fan (!)

Aaron ZORNES

DC6 Pro Mark III w/ DKC-850

Hundreds of Yamaha PianoSoft purchases (FDs, CDs, downloads)