A
player piano (also known as
pianola) is a self-playing
piano, containing a
pneumatic or
electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed
music recorded on perforated
paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using
MIDI encoded music stored on
floppy disks or
CDs. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined as the improvement in
phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical
amplification in home music reproduction via
radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the
stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.