I've been a certified PianoDisc installer for many years and I have
installed at least 250 of them.  Honestly, I'm sick of them at this
point!  But the money is good so I'll probably never entirely get
away from them.

I believe there are three primary attractions that make digital players
desirable today.  First, people are fascinated with electronic gizmos.
We have computers, satellite television and radio, plasma home theaters
with surround sound, video games, cell phones, MP3 players, high speed
Internet, notebook computers, and Blackberries.  The list goes on and
on, down to the dishwasher in your kitchen.  People just like digital
displays and lights.  Having a digital player piano follows in suite
and the public seems eager to add one piece of technology into their
lives.  It appears to be a psychological need.

Second, computer-driven player pianos offer a much wider variety of
entertainment.  The music software seems to be endless with new titles
coming out all the time.  Modern jazz and contemporary rock are what
people want to hear.  The main-stream public no longer appears to have
a strong interest in ragtime and fox-trots.  Classical music is of
course timeless but it is in the vast minority.  90% of the world's
symphony orchestras are gone.  On the other hand, contemporary rock
bands continue to grow.

Third, with the exception of nickelodeons with multi-tune rolls, player
pianos require the roll to be replaced after each song.  Nobody wants
to do that anymore.  We are in a "remote control" society now and want
multi-CD changers or long MP3 play lists that run for hours without
repeating.  Is it pure laziness?   Perhaps, after all it's such a
"bother" to change the roll!

Personally I think roll-powered machines have a certain romanticism
that can not be replaced.  You cannot watch streaming digital
information flowing through a wire.  You can, however, watch the notes
go by on a paper roll and even anticipate them because you can see
them on the paper before they reach the tracker bar.  You can see gears
turning, a pump running, a motor turning, and it all comes together as
an "experience", not just sound.

Even jukeboxes have lost their character.  You used to be able to see
a mechanism carefully pick up a record and place it on a spindle, hear
it play, and then carefully return it to it's designated place.  Now
the display windows are gone and the most recent models use MP3 files
which constantly update through an Internet connection.  The fun is
gone and it's just "music".

One further argument for pneumatic players is that it's a live
performance.  A real vibrating string resonating through a sound board
can never be replaced by a vibrating paper speaker cone.

Rob Goodale
Las Vegas, Nevada