How many people in the world play music?

Answer 1

No statistics are available.

Answer 2

Most countries around the world have schools and most of the world's children attend schools which have music as part of their curriculum. What fraction of students in a typical high school play in a band, or ever studied a musical instrument well enough to learn it? To get an estimate for this question you might compare the ratio of band members to total student body, and extend from that.

My very rough estimate is that less than 10% of the world's population is versatile with any particular musical instrument. Anyone can beat piano keys, but can they reproduce recognizable melodies?

Answer 3

According to government data about 250,000 people paid taxes as musicians in the U.S. last year, which is about 0.1% of the U.S. population. That's not nearly enough if you ask me. Technology may start helping though. Sites like whosdoing.com/music are just getting started but are an awesome free resource and should help musicians find each other. Hopefully that means there will be more bands getting formed.

Answer 4

About 2% as apposed to 7% in Europe. That's about 1/50 of the population or 6,000,000 people.

Answer 5

Not sure about the world but in the U.S. the last statistics I read was between 16-20 million.

Answer 6

Very high, even people who don't care about music, say they do like it and fill 20 lines of artists in their facebook profile.

Answer 7

less than 1% less than 1%