Top Music Equipment Manufacturers

We have taken a look at the Alternative-Electronicsin contrast to other massive multinational
music gear database to find out just which gearcorporations, Clavia employs just 20 workers.
manufacturers are the most popular and whoHowever their Nord Lead synthesizers enjoy
produces the most widely-used gear. These statisticswidespread popularity across a range of music genres
are based on the database's current state (as ofand to this day, Clavia's synths are still hand-made in
January, 2010), which includes the equipment lists ofSweden.
more than 250 experimental electronic artists.A sign of software's increasingly important role in
The top three manufacturers are all based in Japan:music production, German developer Steinberg is fifth
Korg, Roland and Yamaha. More than 60% of theon our list, with 61 users. Their flagship product,
bands surveyed used a piece of gear manufacturedCubase, is the industry standard digital audio
by Korg; 55% had equipment from Roland and overworkstation. In fact, 60 of the 61 bands with
40% had a Yamaha product in their studios. Each ofSteinberg products were users of Cubase.
these three companies has produced multipleFollowing the above-mentioned manufacturers were,
ground-breaking instruments over the years: thein the following order: Akai, Alesis, Access Music,
MS-20 and Electribe series from Korg, The TB-303Native Instruments, Novation, E-mu, Waldorf, Boss,
and 909 and 808 drum machines from Roland as wellM-Audio and Moog. These are all household names
as Yamaha's DX7 and CS series of hardwarefor producers of electronic music, with each
synthesizers.manufacturer being responsible for the development
Sweden's Clavia comes in at fourth place with a totalof pioneering equipment over the years.
of 65 bands. This is particularly impressive considering,