Try making it with "a" - if thing can be "a thing" then it could be "the thing" but if it can't be "a thing" it definitely can't be "the thing" either.
Weirdly, as an en_GB native, neither of these seems wrong to me. I suspect one is British and one is American, and too much TV has driven me to accept the American one.
Both of these are common in the US. It doesn't seem like there's any strong regional connection.
Judging from a search, "play the piano" is about 5 times as common as "play piano", but there are also many sources which uses both versions in close proximity, apparently interchangeably.
theanonymousone · · focus · HN ↗
Pre-LLM I was joking that real AI is whatever can make that decision correctly 100% of times.
geocar · · focus · HN ↗
rom1v · · focus · HN ↗
ad133 · · focus · HN ↗
jacobolus · · focus · HN ↗
Judging from a search, "play the piano" is about 5 times as common as "play piano", but there are also many sources which uses both versions in close proximity, apparently interchangeably.