Los Angeles ? Giovanni Lovatelli and his family lucked into a long-term loan of a 1948 baby grand piano when a friend moved to New York years ago.

Five-year-old Giacomo began taking lessons, practicing diligently for a year or so.

“We had to keep pushing a little bit,” Lovatelli said, adding that he promised a basketball hoop if his son persevered through his teacher’s recital.

Giacomo got the hoop but soon stopped playing piano, and now, at 11, he plays acoustic and electric guitar.

The piano stayed. Friends play, and children pound on it from time to time, but its long-term place in the family is uncertain — as is the piano’s future in American culture.

The piano has been the center of many American homes for generations, not only a proclamation of a love of music but also often a statement about success.

“In a very traditional sense, the piano did stand for something. It was a symbol of mobility, moving up,” especially among immigrant families, said Joe Lamond, president of the International Music Products Association, which is known as NAMM and is based in Carlsbad.

In many homes these days, a piano isn’t so much a musical instrument as it is just another piece of furniture. Christiane Cuse didn’t want that to happen in her home in the Sherman Oaks area of Los Angeles. During renovations, a decorator suggested moving her family’s grand piano to a nook off the living room. She objected.

“I always put the piano in a place people would walk by a lot,” she said. “If it’s off the beaten path, it’s not used.”

But the Cuses may be going against the tide. In the 21st century, the acoustic piano seems to be a relic of another era.

Sales of new acoustic pianos, which peaked three decades ago, have been harmed by the crash of the stock and housing markets, Lamond said.

Figures from NAMM and Music Trades reveal that 105,000 acoustic upright and grand pianos were sold in the United States in 2000. In 2007, the total was 54,000. Electronic piano sales rose from 82,000 to 121,000 over the same period, and Americans bought 1.2 million portable keyboards in 2007.

By contrast, sales for a generally cheaper instrument — the guitar — have risen: From 1998 to 2007, acoustic guitar sales grew to 1.35 million from 611,000; for electric guitars, the numbers grew to 1.5 million from 543,000.

Jeffrey Lavner, a piano teacher at Colburn School in downtown Los Angeles, said: “I think piano playing is a little like black-and-white movies.”

It isn’t that our need for music has diminished, said James Parakilas, music department chairman at Bates College in Maine and author of “Piano Roles: 300 Years of Life With the Piano.”

In fact, opportunities to hear music seem to be increasing: at home, in cars, even as we walk or jog, buds nestled in our ears. It’s that there are so many ways to make and listen to music, and most of them are less demanding and expensive than actually playing the piano.

Many forces have contributed to the acoustic piano’s troubles. Start with electronic keyboards and digital instruments, with their improving quality and alluring gadgets such as metronomes, USB ports, headphones and recording devices. Not to mention their generally lower price.

“We live in a digital age,” said Brian Majeski, editor of Music Trades magazine. “You have to redefine the instrument.”

And in a time of foreclosures and downsizing, the expense of a traditional piano — which can run from a few thousand dollars to $100,000 or more — may seem untenable, especially for a child who may be eager to play but has no track record in the rigors of daily practice. What’s more, for students, there is ferocious competition for the hours between school and sleep: Homework or video games? Soccer or ballet? Facebook or television?

In a survey of piano teachers conducted in 2005 for the Piano Manufacturers Association International, 89 percent said that the primary reason a child drops lessons is “too many other activities.” That worries Ellen Collins, a piano teacher in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles, who said the piano has been replaced by a television as the center of the living room or den.

“It saddens me,” she said. “How many grown-ups are out there on the soccer field? But music? That’s a whole lifetime.”