music by player

[Malzian]

:P So what you're saying is that there's nothing in lore that would be against this idea?

This may seem very nitpicky, but the playable character in four main series Final Fantasy games plays the piano, the lute is played in two, the bell is played in one, and Geomancers, Ninjas, White Mages, and Cait Sith all use instruments in the main series without being bards. That isn't mentioning the amount singing playable characters or npc who also have musical forays or Final Fantasy spinoffs. If you're worried about precedence, I wouldn't sweat it.

I would love to see this included in the game, side content like this I think is some of the best world building.

Edit: I also forgot the concert in FFVIII at Fisherman's Horizon! Where the player characters play the violin, flute, Acoustic Guitar, tap, Piano, Sax, Electric Guitar, and Bass!

In most occasions in FF, playing music has some sort of effect associated with it. There have been breaks with this but most music hasn't been just for the sake of music itself. As far as FFVIII... I've forgotten more about that game than I care to remember, I see it as an side-layer in the mythos and it doesn't really quite fit with the themes of the rest of the games.

Also with the comment below:

I'm all for the idea of players being able to play music. Even if it was limited to players who have unlocked bard, (which it certainly shouldn't be), it would give players an opportunity to actually compose ballads to "sing" and preform in public, which would just enhance the world in general. In a more complex variant of this, I wouldn't mind having the ability to set up a "collection bowl" as well when you enter the performance menu to play the instrument so that passerby who liked the songs could give the musician gil to support their efforts. If done though, we would have to have something set up such that more crowded areas like Mor Dhona and the main city states only have a single location that you can actually preform in, and that you have to register a time slot for, so as to keep it from becoming over crowded. In less crowded areas, it could be more free about it however.....

I'm sorry, LotRO had immensely larger and more sprawling zones than XIV and many many more hub cities so the chances of overlapping with others wanting to play was low and most would give you space if you were playing something in a spot where they wanted to play. At the Pony there was a huge area that you could have at least 6 or 7 people playing in and none would be crowded over the others. You don't even need to think about MD... if you talk even like places around the MB in Limsa you already have people who love to do nothing but spam Holy and do Goon 'pole dancing' to no end.

TL;DR: Thematically it doesn't really fit with what music can do in the FF world archetype. Zones are also far too small and too crowded to make the system viable without being obnoxious in most cases.

This, however, is my opinion... please do take it as that.