Genos2 already going as pre-owned!!

[Danny1972]

Very surprised to see Genos2's sent in and being sold as pre-owned already. Are people already getting fed up of them !!! 

[Rick D.]

Danny,

A lot of people get buyers remorse. When the take delivery of a new keyboard, they become overwhelmed with all the tech. I guess it depends on what keyboard they came from. I always wait at least 9 months before getting the latest and greatest. One it is to let Yamaha get the bugs worked out two it is to get a better deal.

One other cause of a return on a new keyboard is the wife just got the credit card bill! 

Rick D.

[JohnS (Ugawoga)]

Hi

I cannot get over how good the Genos 2 is

[Danny1972]

Danny,

A lot of people get buyers remorse. When the take delivery of a new keyboard, they become overwhelmed with all the tech. I guess it depends on what keyboard they came from. I always wait at least 9 months before getting the latest and greatest. One it is to let Yamaha get the bugs worked out two it is to get a better deal.

One other cause of a return on a new keyboard is the wife just got the credit card bill! 

Rick D.

Yeah I can see there could those reasons in play and probably many more too. I know that when I buy a keyboard, I get it with the intention of it being a keeper. I think the Genos2 is the best Yamaha arranger bar none that you just can't help but smile every time you play it.

I don't expect to see too many more of them as used and I suspect it would be snapped up very quickly.

[Wim]

I know when you ordered a Genos in January/February you had to wait for months due to a shortage. If I want order a Genos2 now I get it with in one or two weeks. So the expactations maybe were to high from Yamaha that every Genos owner step over to the new Genos2.
rgds
Wim

[andyg]

It's been like this since the first day I worked in the business, back in 1972. Customers would buy a new organ or piano and then decide that it wasn't the right one for them after all. As the dealer, I'd usually try to ensure that they bought the right instrument in the first place, but there's no allowing for a customer who simply changes their mind. And as the dealer, I'd usually try to help them out.

And oh, the number of times I heard "I bought this [insert make] organ from [insert rival dealer] last month and I don't like it. He doesn't have anything else I like, what can you show me?" Sometimes I could help, sometimes not.

As for the waiting time dropping, that's also been part of the business for ever! Example; September 1987. Kawai launched one of my 'babies', the SR6 organ. The first time we showed it to the public as a pre-production model, we sold out the entire European shipment in a week. (Europe wasn't too pleased when we 'took' their stock!) Those customers had to wait, OK, only a couple of weeks for the organs to get to the UK. Sales went crazy, so we greatly increased our UK orders still a 6 week wait to get them from Japan - and a month or two after that we managed to get to the point where we actually had stock in the warehouse. Delivery could then be immediate.

[reya]

Already going as pre-owned and already a significant price drop for a new one as well. Currently down from €4.900 early december to €4.199 now in some shops 

[pjd]

Also, there's a bunch of "open box" items at on-line retailers not long after initial release. It's hard to find some products in stores for demo. Thus, folks buy, try and return.

This is sometimes an opportunity to get a lightly used return item with a few dollars (quid, euro, whatever) knocked off.

Next up -- returned SEQTRAKs once they start shipping in quantity...

-- pj

[Oxford1035]

Genos 2 can't be selling that bad. I know a couple of dealers that have stopped taking Genos 1 part exchanges at the moment as they are snowed under with them.

Russ

[EileenL]

Genos 2 is selling very well in the UK and a lot of people are having to wait for new stocks to arrive.

[DrakeM]

Perhaps the Genos 2 was returned after the buyer downloaded all the style from it.

[rattley]

Hello!


"Perhaps the Genos 2 was returned after the buyer downloaded all the style from it."

The onboard Genos2 styles were available before the Keyboard was released. I remember downloading them and playing them on my Genos1. Some of them really sounded funky since the newer styles were looking for voices that weren't there yet. -charley

[ton37]

Ahem.., 99.999% of the world's population has no interest in a Genos at all.  Don't forget that we live  in a kind of 'Yamaha bubble' on this forum.  There are many other and sometimes much more important topics out there that concern the species. So don't be afraid if there is one who abandons our faith... The world just keeps turning.. 

[DaPaleRider]

I also got rid of my Genos2 and exchanged it for a Korg Pa5x. I had a PSR-SX900 and wanted Yamaha's flagship because it gives you the best of the best.
But for me that was a personal disappointment. The difference with the PSR-SX900 is hardly worth mentioning for me. You can do almost the same thing with it, except that the Genos2 is larger, has more options in operation, but it all works the same within the operating system. I thought it was a shame to spend so much money on new sounds, a few new effects and some buttons.
I therefore exchanged it for a Korg where I can set up and make everything in detail myself. Such as the voices, organ settings, effects and creating your own voices.

I hear that there are more Yamaha enthusiasts who are either going back to the Genos 1 or switching to another brand. I think this may also be due to the small innovation steps that Yamaha has made with the Genos in the time between the Genos 1 and the Genos 2.

[EileenL]

Genos 2 is the best keyboard yet from Yamaha. The sound alone blows you away. The new reverb alone is a great feature.

[Amwilburn]

Ahem.., 99.999% of the world's population has no interest in a Genos at all.  Don't forget that we live  in a kind of 'Yamaha bubble' on this forum.  There are many other and sometimes much more important topics out there that concern the species. So don't be afraid if there is one who abandons our faith... The world just keeps turning.. 

*this* is exactly it.

Most of the world doesn't have interest in top of the line arrangers; which is why the %age in Germany is remarkable.

The % of population that purchased a Genos in Canada and the USA is approx .003% The % population that purchased Genos in Japan is approx 0% (too may decimals). Germany? Approx 2%

Considering only around 12% of the world population plays musical instruments (and almost half of that is piano); that means out of the 6% target pool?
.3333333 (1/3) of potential customers in Germany bought a Genos! 33%!
.0005 of potential customers in US & Canada bought one. 0.05% (1/20 of a percent)
.0000 (less than 1 ten thousandth of a percent) in Japan bought one.

But if you look at it another way, all of us on this forum are in the top 20th of a percent!

By the way the same thing happens for other brands. Ketron sells effectively 0% in Canada, but I bet they do well in Italy; Korg does a *lot* more business in the Middle East, and again virtually 0% in their home country of Japan.

Mark

[Toril S]

The Genos 2 is not selling well in Norway so far. Times are harder, all prices go up, and many are very satisfied with their Genos 1. I believe this will change eventually. But the price of the Genos 2 is very hefty! And we don't have part exchange here. You can't come into a music store with your old Genos and change it up to a Genos 2. You have to sell it privately, and people are not so eager to buy expensive things just now. I am also "sitting on the fence" as we use to say here.

[rattley]

I like living in my "Yamaha Bubble" !!!  Thank you very much............ -charley

[cyber swine]

Big thanks to Mark for his fascinating stats.... makes one realize how special we all are!  The numbers are awesome and food for thought.  Now if I can ease my eye strain and get rid of my headache before he posts any more I'll be ready for the next batch 

[konaboy32]

There is no way that 2 in every 100 germans own a Genos. You are saying they have sold 1.6 million Gs in Germany? Sorry, but what are these nonsense stats?!

This will be great news for Yamaha though, their previous best-selling keyboard of all time, the DX7 sold only 200,000.

The % of population that purchased a Genos in Canada and the USA is approx .003% The % population that purchased Genos in Japan is approx 0% (too may decimals). Germany? Approx 2%
Mark

[BogdanH]

These stats numbers that Mark provided made me thinking...
The reason why we expect that more keyboards is sold in US (or Canada, or Japan, etc.) is simply because those are wealthy countries -in sense, everyone can afford to buy it. But I believe that's not matter of money.. it has more to do with historical cultural differences.

I live in Europe and when I was about ten years old (yeah, is few years ago), I joined the children musicians club in relative small nearby city, where I learned playing accordion for about three years. During that time the club had constantly about 60-80 members and every year new were coming and older were leaving.
Here I've found an old photo of that club, so you can get an impression:


Why am I telling about that? To explain where from potential (keyboards) buyers came from! I'm quite sure that similar clubs existed in other european countries as well. I have no idea if that was also the case in US... probably not.
Or let me put this way: the main mobile instrument in Europe was accordion; in US however, it was a guitar.

Times have changed meanwhile (nowadays kids prefer computer games) and so that will also impact keyboard market in future.

Bogdan

[KurtAgain]

I live in Germany and had accordion lessons as a child and was also in an accordion orchestra similar to the one in Bogdan's picture. But 2% just for TOTL arrangers seems like a lot to me. Maybe if the 2% also includes Clavinovas?

I think that the most successful YouTube channel in Germany on the subject of arranger keyboards is Alois Müller's channel https://www.youtube.com/@AloisMueller

His most viewed video has around 150,000 views. There will be some multiple views. But there are certainly also arranger players in Germany who don't watch YouTube videos. As a rough estimate I would think there are at most 300,000 arranger players in Germany. But I don't think there are 1.6 million Genos or Tyros players in Germany. But maybe I'm completely wrong.

[Amwilburn]

Kurt, you're right... it's possible I may have made a decimal error on Germany's, as 200,000 DX7's over 3 years worldwide was "fire", and the Genos only had 6 years; more likely 1/10 of the approx percentage.  And their most successful product, the U1 piano (keep in mind this is just 1 specific model, not even all Yamaha acoustics or digitls!) has only sold 4-5M total.

You're probably right about my calculations (I know our sales figures, and I know the approx ratio out of all canadian retailers, and then I'm sometimes shown pie charts every few years of relative to North America and the rest of the world, (and approximate breakdowns in categories), and the Genos launch in Germany was specifically mentioned to me (as a hard figure) *but* I wasn't allowed to write any of that down, so I'm doing all the ratios from memory.

Let's put it this way, if I'm off by a decimal on Germany? I'm also off by a decimal (in the same direction) for USA, Canada, etc. (in other words, divide all the percentages by 10 then)

Mind you, the world pop was 5B in 1987, and 8B this year...

But let's say I am off by a full decimal, in Germany's *only*, and it's is closer to 0.2%... that's still quite a bit ahead of .003% !


What you *can* google are total sales of Yamaha music instruments per year. which for the last decade or so has been a consistent 2 - 2.5 $Billion (USD) per year! And that's their music division only, not motorcycles or jet skis or snowmobiles.

that's literally 25 cents out of the pocket of every person on earth, annually.
Mind boggling, really.

Roland, one of the largest competitors, did 400-700 M annually during the pandemic years (scroll to financial statements)
https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.roland_corporation.d4b109f74471fd3866bb8f846b63bed2.html

Fun fact: Roland's printer division is massive; and outsells its music instruments division (almost 2 to 1)! They're the largest manufacturer of blueprint drafting printers). The above figures *include* the printer division. Which means their music instrument sales are approx 1/12 of Yamaha's

Korg's is typically between 100-500M, but it's hard to get exact figures from them.

[maartenb]

All Tyros boards (models 1-5) together sold 100,000+ units.

We arranger players are a niche of a niche.

Therefore Yamaha have limited manpower available to improve each model. They have to carefully prioritize what to include in the next model.

I am very glad Yamaha still produces new arranger keyboards!


Maarten

[mikf]

That is only the TOTL model, but spread over many years.  To put it in perspective, Yamaha sells about 100,000 pianos per year., and that's an awful lot more money than arrangers. So Yamaha could drop arrangers and hardly notice it in the corporate accounts. But to be fair, that might also be true of many individual instruments, .....trumpets, saxes etc. Of course traditional instruments need very little development  effort, but I still would expect them to remain very prominent in arrangers. Although,  as was inferred above, the arranger development resources may be much less than people imagine when they picture a giant corporation.

Mike

[Amwilburn]

The point was ton37 hit the nail on the head; no amount of extra resources thrown at the TOTLAs would make much difference to the marketshare, it's *very* small. And correct Mike, most individual instruments could be viewed that way. But they must be doing something right ($2.5 USD B /year; or approx $3.5B CAD!)

I'm very sad that there is currently no play for a CVP based off the G2. Was hoping if enough sales happen for CVP809/909 (yes, same thing really) they might reconsider. Because the G2 sounds this good through those tiny GNSMS01 speakers; imagine it through the 6.1 system on an 809/909!!!

Mark