The "useless" toys that sold over 1 billion yuan have become the new favorite for young people's team - building activities.

As the end of the year approaches, a headache for all office workers is coming again: the annual company party and team - building performances.

Some people wrack their brains for talent shows, while others struggle to keep up with the accompaniment when singing. However, since the past few years, the difficulty of these problems has been greatly reduced.

This is because young people have a new savior - the stringless guitar. As the name suggests, a stringless guitar is a guitar without strings. Due to the lack of traditional configurations, it greatly reduces the performance difficulty for players - just touch the buttons, and it can produce the sounds of guitars and other musical instruments.

For many music beginners who don't know how to play the guitar but want to try, this is undoubtedly a blessing. Taking it to the stage for a performance can not only meet the performance requirements but also eliminate the worry of making mistakes.

It's conceivable that young people simply can't resist it. This new "species" in the music field achieved sales of 968 million yuan in 2024, and its explosive growth is even more astonishing: from sales of 105 million yuan in 2023, it increased nearly 9 - fold in one year.

It has to be said that the stringless guitar is seizing the market at an astonishing speed and becoming a phenomenon - level product in the field of intelligent musical instruments. It sold 1 billion yuan in a year. How did this big toy become popular?

From celebrities to college students, they are queuing up to spend money

"Is there an automatic - mode guitar now?"

It was the college students who first discovered the charm of the stringless guitar.

On the Internet, you can see many college students playing the guitar and singing by themselves. Overnight, "there seem to be many more professional guitarists".

How to sell a stringless guitar to people who can't play the guitar? The answer is that people who like music and want to liven up the atmosphere. So the first popular scenario for the stringless guitar is the college dormitory.

Imagine that at night in the dormitory common area or bedroom, friends sit in a circle. A classmate picks up the stringless guitar and follows the indicator lights on the APP. Just touch where the light is on, and they can lead everyone to sing "Ordinary Road" or "Qilixiang".

What's even better is that its timbre is not limited to that of a guitar. One stringless guitar = bass + cello + vintage electric piano, making it a real eye - catcher in the crowd.

Not only do extroverts like it. Since it is simple enough, anyone can have a try, instantly livening up the atmosphere and avoiding the awkward situation where only one person performs while others just watch.

It can also be a beloved toy for introverts. After a day of classes or club activities, they need some time for themselves to "recharge". Plug in the headphones, and they can enjoy half an hour of playing and singing by themselves.

The second popular scenario for the stringless guitar is the "office - stress - free" camping.

On the Internet, there are often a lot of scenes of friends gathering. Whoever holds a stringless guitar is like a walking eye - catcher. During camping, when a friend starts playing and singing, others can quickly join in by following the indicator lights on the APP or the guitar. It becomes an active way of rest instead of just looking at mobile phones, helping to wash away the tired "office stress". Some users accurately describe it as "the spiritual yoga for urban people".

Data shows that young people aged 18 - 30 are the main buyers of the stringless guitar, accounting for nearly half. Office workers aged 25 - 40 are also the main purchasing group.

In terms of sales, it can be regarded as a kind of industry miracle.

In April 2023, LiberLive launched its first stringless guitar, the C1, and it sold out as soon as it went on sale. Subsequently, brands such as Enya and Nahuo Jingling were launched one after another in 2024. E - commerce platform data fully proves the popularity of the stringless guitar. During the 618 promotion in 2025, stringless guitars even occupied the top three positions in the single - product sales of musical instruments.

It has become a real dark horse in the domestic market and a popular "big toy" among foreigners abroad.

Nahuo Jingling launched a crowdfunding campaign on the European and American crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Five months after the official release, its sales in Europe and America directly exceeded 20,000 units.

Even on the second - hand trading platform, there is a rental business for stringless guitars. Renting a stringless guitar for 7 days, 15 days, or a month costs between 139 yuan and 298 yuan, and the cheapest is 30 yuan a day.

Actually, in terms of price, the price of the stringless guitar is not particularly affordable. The average price is about 2,234 yuan, which is basically equivalent to a game console or a low - end mobile phone.

But reality proves that people all over the world can't resist things that are useful and simple.

A "fake" guitar meets two "real" needs

Many people want to know who could invent the stringless guitar?

The answer is: they are both music fans and smart - technology enthusiasts. For example, for the popular stringless guitar brand LiberLive, the name DJI in the tech circle is inseparable from its founder.

Tang Wenxuan, the founder of LiberLive, was once an algorithm engineer at DJI. He loves music outside of work. He learned the guitar in college but found it difficult. When learning, he found that the dropout rate of traditional guitar learners in the first 3 months was as high as 70%. Why not create a guitar that even beginners can play? This is how LiberLive started.

So, they just got started. In 2019, they began to develop the stringless guitar. However, many people rejected this strange idea as soon as they heard it, and most people were not optimistic. No one expected that at this time, Li Zexiang, the chairman of DJI, firmly supported them. From the initial capital investment to financing, the team endured for 4 years and finally developed the first stringless guitar.

Reality has proved that the product was a great success as soon as it was launched. Subsequently, it even led to a wave of stringless transformation among many traditional guitar manufacturers.

Although it is a "fake" guitar, it meets two "real" market needs.

The first need is a low - cost "refuge".

The most understated advantage of the stringless guitar is simplicity.

In the past, the threshold for playing the guitar was too high. Buying a guitar was just a small thing, but the time and money invested in learning to play the guitar could not be ignored. However, just being "easy to learn in 5 minutes" is obviously not enough.

LiberLive keenly noticed that for most ordinary people, the core need may not be to master a difficult skill, but to obtain the fun and emotional value of performance with low threshold and high efficiency.

Therefore, appearance is an important advantage. It is designed according to different groups of people, and special versions such as the kitten version and the geek version are launched. It looks like a "big toy", making young people love it.

Secondly, portability is also a huge plus. The stringless guitar can be folded and disassembled, taking up only a quarter of the volume of a traditional guitar, making it convenient to carry to various party occasions.

It is not limited to improving the musical instrument itself but redefines a new scenario of "easily experiencing music", which is essentially a breakthrough in the logic of traditional consumer goods.

The second need is a low - threshold "social currency".

In addition to the product meeting the needs of some people, the popularity of the stringless guitar also depends on a series of well - planned marketing activities by various manufacturers.

On the Douyin platform, the topic of the stringless guitar has been viewed more than 370 million times, and the most popular video has received more than 4.04 million likes.

Behind this, brands find various celebrities to endorse and influencers to promote the product to quickly open up the market. For example, they cooperate with top influencers in multiple fields such as games, comedy, drama, and cute pets to increase brand awareness.

The live - streaming rooms also don't miss out. The official flagship store of LiberLive adopts the "round - the - clock live - streaming" model, with an average of more than 11 hours of live - streaming per day. The host plays and sings while selling, creating an artistic atmosphere. This "teaching + selling" model has an effect comparable to that of Li Jiaqi.

At the same time, LiberLive is also good at building connections with users. It has created more than 40 user groups at once. These are not just selling groups but "stringless guitar enthusiasts' clubs" and "music exchange communities", as well as creating an "online party scene". It encourages users to organize activities such as community relay singing, directly transforming users from "consumers" to "hosts", which is definitely a traffic - attracting strategy.

After all, the deep - seated need behind users' purchase of the stringless guitar is not to become a guitar master but to enjoy music with a low threshold, have fun, and find like - minded friends.

So, its community is not just mechanically maintained but carefully cultivates an atmosphere and culture of "playing music". Just like Lululemon and Starbucks, LiberLive has become a social currency on its own.

Some people bought it out of curiosity and unexpectedly got