Prepare yourself for some bad news: the piano shop industry is not booming. People are opting for cheaper things and skills that require less time. They're more interested in a cute little keyboard that can make duck noises than in huge, fancy, nosebleed-expensive grand pianos.

That doesn't mean you can't have a booming business, though. If you're a good businessperson and are constantly adding goods and services to your piano shop—for example, a wider instrument selection, piano classes, and/or a tuning and refurbishing service for people who already own pianos—you can do amazingly well as a piano shop owner.

 

It may be as simple as only selling super-cool cow pianos. (Source)

The industry isn't ever going to disappear entirely. While online shopping is definitely growing in popularity, most people would probably feel strange buying such a big item online. People need to know they like the look and feel of a piano in person, and the only way to do that is to step into a shop. So long as you can leap the small-business hurdle (and it's a big one, to be fair), you'll be able to keep doing this for way more than twenty years.

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