Making a player piano work like Spotify instead of a steam engine.

As the popularity of music streaming services like Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music has grown, how we listen to music has changed. While these services don’t offer player piano music, some player piano makers want to offer the same experience.

In 2015, QRS added a free option to Cloud Player piano systems they simply named “Radio,” allowing users to easily create their own “stations” based on genre (like Rock, Pop, Classical, Dinner Music, etc) that play continuously without commercials. All of QRS’s previous generations can be upgraded to Cloud Player.

Steinway & Sons’ Spirio player pianos were introduced that same year, offering a new library of music recorded specifically for and on their pianos. They offer the first and only player piano that includes all music and video tracks for free to the original owner. They also update their library monthly, including an overview of the new music and curated playlists with the new music and existing songs that fit the season.

These two leading-edge builders changed owners’ expectations of how a player piano should work.

Yamaha followed in 2016, offering Disklavier Radio on their Enspire player systems and a hardware upgrade (DKC-850) for select old Disklavier models.

Since Steinway Spirio offers everything for free and other builders are not offering any type of radio streaming at this time, this review will focus on QRS’s Pianomation Streamer for Cloud Player and Disklavier Radio.

What’s the same?

Both services offer the ability to turn the piano on and just let it play. In the mood for dinner music? There’s a channel for that. Ready to rock out? There’s a channel for that. Celebrating Christmas? You get the point.

Both are straight-forward to use from an iPad or tablet, while Cloud Player will also work with any smartphone, smart TV, and with assistants like Amazon Alexa and OK Google.

What can’t it do?

These services are similar to FM or satellite radio stations. They’re picking the music to play, they play it continuously, but they don’t take requests.

To pick specific songs, Disklavier owners have to upgrade to a Premium Pass, however, it is unclear if this allows access to their entire library or only some songs. Selecting a song plays that song, not a station based on that song or genre.

What’s free?

Disklavier Radio offers two complimentary stations, while Cloud Player allows you to play, create playlists, and build streaming stations from more than 4,000 free songs (Complimentary Music) from a wide range of genres. According to Yamaha’s most recent built-in song list, they offer fewer than 300 songs*, including 10 Rock, 10 R&B/Soul, and 13 Country tracks.

Without paying anything, Cloud Player lets you create streaming stations from those thousands of free tracks. It will work the same way as a paid plan, only it’s choosing from about 30% of the total library instead of the entire available QRS library.

QRS also started offering free playlists to all users, whether paying for a plan or not, on a limited-time basis. Their first lists were a tribute to Jimmy Buffett that included solo piano, piano with Jimmy singing, and lists for the beach or bar… or the ballads!

What do I pay for?

Disklavier Radio ($19.99/mo – $199.99/yr) works more like an FM radio station or streaming radio station. Songs are played that fit in the format of the channel you’ve selected.

Pianomation Streamer ($115/yr Solo – $235/yr with Accompaniment) for Cloud Player is more like Pandora or Spotify. Stations are based on genres and you have the ability to skip songs you don’t like. The other big difference is that Streamer is playing music that is stored in your piano so that it won’t slow down your internet speed when you’re using it.

And unlike Disklavier Radio, if your internet goes out during that birthday party you’ve been planning, your Cloud Player will keep playing.

Another difference is the ability to go month-to-month with Disklavier Radio or get a discount for paying for the full year in advance. Pianomation only offers annual options, but a full year of their solo service costs less than six months of Disklavier Radio.

While you choose to renew all of the Cloud Player plans, Disklavier Radio apparently auto-renews whether you want to or not. If you’re going to try the annual plan, be sure to turn off the auto-renew option as soon as you sign up.

Conclusion

The cost of the top-tier Streamer is almost half the price of the month-to-month Disklavier Radio plan. If you are happy putting on an FM radio station when you are entertaining, you’ll probably be just as happy with Disklavier Radio. If you enjoy Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music or others – or want to save money – Pianomation Streamer is more what you are used to. Remember, once you pick your player piano system, you’ll be stuck with the streaming, radio, and library options of that system.

Because QRS offers so much free music and allows you to do so much with it (create playlists, stations, etc) the reviewers picked PianoMation Streamer for Cloud Player as their Top Pick.

Before You Buy Either Piano

While both Disklavier and PianoMation allow you to purchase albums, only PianoMation 3 gives you the option to purchase any song individually. If you love Goodbye Yellow Brick Road but you’re not a fan of Philadelphia Freedom, you can simply purchase the one you like best. The background will be the same as on the original album with Elton singing. If you want that from Disklavier, you have to purchase the entire album ($29.99) of their version of his greatest hits, only no Elton and it’s not the original recording.

Which brings up another difference between the libraries. Yamaha offers a good amount of music in famous arrangements, but they tend to be those “music made famous by” recordings – like what they play at a karaoke bar. The QRS library is deep with piano along with the original recordings by Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Diana Krall, The Rolling Stones… everything from Adele to Taylor Swift to Zac Brown Band.

After You Bought The Piano

Upgrading Yamaha Disklavier pianos

The reviewers also gave points to PianoMation because it can be used to upgrade what Yamaha calls their “legacy” models.

According to Yamaha, they’ve had six versions of Disklavier before the one that offers radio. They introduced a new upgrade, the DKC-900 to replace the DKC-850, however, it can only upgrade Mark IV and new Disklavier models.

If you purchase a used player piano or a piano that doesn’t play by itself, you can upgrade or add Cloud Player to virtually any existing piano. Disklavier is only offered on new Yamaha pianos.

We’ve found a way to upgrade all of the legacy Disklavier systems to Cloud Player, giving users all of the advanced features without having to buy a new piano or even more the one they already have, potentially saving tens of thousands of dollars.  

1. According to their website, Enspire systems include 500 songs. A review of their list shows nearly half of these are lessons with fewer than 300 being songs intended to be listened to.