Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Recent Disturbance in the Piano Trade as a Result of the Develop-
ment of the Talking Machine Business—Many Dealers Do Not Regard
the Player as a Profitable Proposition—Creating the Proper Impression.
Those who keep their ears to the ground may
.liscover these days the rumblings incident to some
internal disturbance in the retail piano trade, a
disturbance at present largely made up of noise
and scarcely yet ready for manifestation in any
direct and positive movement of opinion, yet a
disturbance for all that. Wherever one goes, if
one keeps an open ear, as it were, one may dis-
cover the audible signs of a mental ferment going
on through the rank and file of piano retailers—
a ferment which, when brought to a climax, must
give us something new in the way of trade policy.
The movement of which we here speak paraboli-
cally is to be found originating' in the growing
popularity of the talking machine.
We have no idea of referring to any recent de-
velopments in the talking machine business, nor
have we any idea that the latest court decision
concerning the powers of patentees to fix prices
will, of itself, have any special effect on the phe-
nomena of which we speak. Rather, on the other
hand, we believe that what is now happening in
the piano trade would have happened anyhow.
With this reservation, let us examine the actual
state of affairs.
Soir^ Dealers Disappointed in the Player.
Without any desire to exaggerate the gravity of
any situation that may exist, it seems to us that
the player trade ought to realize that there is a
growing fee'.ing of disappointment among smaller
dealers with the performances of the player-piano
as a profit-making proposition, and at the same
time a concomitantly growing enthusiasm with the
talking machine, considered under the same as-
pects. Concretely, a great number of piano deal-
ers are beginning to believe that it is easier and
more profitable, to say nothing of mutually more
satisfactory, to sell the talking machine than to
boost the player-piano. In consequence, travelers
are beginning to report a sort of indifference to-
ward the whole player proposition, an indiffer-
ence not arising from any condition of the times,
but based on the belief that the player is relatively
too hard to sell, too hard to keep sold and too
hard to boom successfully in any given commu-
nity.
In saying this, which is, after all, the fruit of
much recent discussion with wholesale salesmen
and manufacturers, we realize quite clearly that
nothing is easier than to exaggerate the impor-
tance of such a feeling. The rank and file of the
piano dealers are not big business men. Per con-
tra, they are usually small business men, though
usually good salesmen. To such dealers, who con-
stitute the bulk of the retail traders, the player-
piano has always been a puzzle. On the face of
the proposition, a piano that everybody can play
in some sort of fashion, and that a persevering
music-lover can soon learn to play extremely well,
should be a tremendously fascinating proposition.
On the face of it, the mere fact that the player-
piano gives its owner an unlimited repertory of
musical performance should render sales extreme-
ly easy. On the face of it, one wouM suppose
that nothing should be easier than to sell player-
pianos. The logic of the situation, cseteris pari-
bus, would point unerringly in this direction.
"But," as the slightly incrapulated gentlemen
said to his bosom friend, "my dear fellow, cseteris
paribus be d
d!" The fact is that, as the hon-
est toiler might say less picturesquely, but no less
inaccurately, ceteris is not paribus. The other
things are not equal. There are conditions of
which we have not yet spoken that enter into any
practical discussion of the subject. There are
factors to be taken into account that we have not
yet described, and that are not apparent on the
surface of things. We must consider them, for
they are serious.
Careless Advertising Has Bad Effect.
The player-piano has suffered from a multitude
of causes. One of these, and one of the most im-
portant, is to be found in the careless way in
which it has been advertised. It was enough to
tell the truth in the beginning and say that any-
body could produce some sort of music with the
player, while with care and attention one might
soon become a most finished expert. But this was
not enough for the trade. Although nobody has
the slightest expectation of becoming an expert
golfer the first time he takes up a club, or an ex-
pert billiardist the first time he handles a cue, it
was somehow supposed that the public would not
buy player-pianos unless they were blandly assured
that neither intelligence nor care, not to speak of
practise, was required to "operate" them success-
fully and pleasingly. When the lie was discov-
ered, as of course it was almost from the start,
the public felt that it had been stung—as in-
deed was perfectly true—and from that day on-
ward the player-piano has continued to suffer
from the stupidity of its promoters. There is no
use in pretending that this is not so. If you don't
believe it, ask the first policeman or the first gro-
cery clerk or the first member of the President's
Cabinet you meet what he thinks of the player-
piano. The replies will have a distressing simi-
larity, and familiarity. Most of them will be
epigrammatically condensed into just one word—
rotten.
Where the Music Roll Has Entered.
Another cause of almost equal importance has
been operating from the first. W e refer to the
music-roll question. Surely, at this late day, it
will not be denied that the music-roll business,
though it is as the very blood of t'ae player game,
has not been handled very intelligently. Perhaps
we might put it most accurately by saying that
music rolls cost too much, that they have been too
much treated as something not at all connected
with the selling of player-pianos, that the pur-
chaser too often is left in the dark concerning the
cost of rolls and their availability, that virtually
no attention has been given to encouraging the use
of music rools among purchasers, that, in short,
the retail buyer is left to his own sweet will in
the choice, purchase and use of rolls. Let us put
it this w a y : Is it sensible, is it reasonable, to sup-
pose that people will be satisfied, after buying a
five hundred dollar, or seven hundred dollar, or
thousand dollar player-piano, to use a dozen rolls
of music on it forever? Will they not want many
dozen? A n d ought not the acquirement of that
many dozen to be made as easy, instead of as dif-
ficult, as possible? Is it not absurd that the a c -
quirement of what is utterly essential to the suc-
cess of the player-piano as a sales proposition
should be made as hard as possible, and that deal-
ers should positively boast that they neither know
lmr care anything about rolls?
It is. But the point to be considered here is
that the dealers, finding that the public is gener-
ally uneasy about the player-piano all the w a y
round are not taking any special steps to see
whether the fault is with their own handling of
the matter. On the cc ntrary, they are blaming the
player for a condition for which neither that in-
strument nor its makers are responsible, except
very indirectly. They should be laying the blame
on themselves. Instead, they are quarreling with
the player and are saying that the talking machine
is easier to sell.
..* ••
-• *' ' J.
Selling the Player vs. the Talking Machine.
Of course it is, if one takes that view of it. Vir-
tually no salesmanship is required to sell a talk-
ing machine. It sells itself. Really there is noth-
ing one can do to sell it, except put on a record
and play it through. Leave the customer alone
and in most cases he will make the sale to him-
self (or she to herself). Tne record sells the
machine. And here, of course, we have one of
the big differences between the two propositions.
The music roll requires manipulation, the record
doesn't. The vast majority of people are too men-
tally and physically lazy to do anything for them-
selves when they have been told that they need
not. And naturally, seeing that the player-piano
has consistently been sold on the understanding
that it is purely automatic, and that the customer
has promptly found out that this is not so, but
that he has, on this basis, been treated to a gold
brick, it follows that when something really au-
tomatic comes along, like the talking machine, that
section of the public which really wanted a talker
all the time (but did not know it) rushes for the
latter and won't even listen to players any more.
What is more natural? And whose fault is it?
Now, there is no denying that the general feeling
of which we have here spoken does, to a greater
or lesser extent, prevail through the ranks of the
smaller dealers. And the piano business is of a
nature which renders it imperative that the inter-
ests of these dealers be conserved and their sup-
port be secured constantly. In order that the
player proposition, in which now so much money
and physical plant are invested, should be assured
of continuance and prosperity, it is plain that the
manufacturers will have to take into account the
movement of public taste as reflected by their
smaller retailers. They cannot do this, in our
humble opinion, by making the player-piano more
and more automatic. We do not believe that put-
ting electric motors into players will solve the
problem. We believe, on the other hand, that it
would be a great deal better to have a player de-
veloped along the best lines, at a good price and
on a basis of unexceptionable quality, with all em-
phasis laid on the idea of personal control and
personal interpretation. Such a player has a place
lor itself and can hi 1 sold in steadily for as long
as music lasts.
Creating the Proper Impression.
The fact of the matter is that, as we have said
often before, intelligence is the keynote of success
in this business. So long as the dealer deliberately
kills the respect of the purchaser in advance of
any sale by his price and advertisement antics he
may as well expect to attract only a trade that will
rush off in the opposite direction as soon as some-
thing new comes along. But the time is here when
it ought to be recognized that there is a deep
stratum of public opinion virtually untouched; a
stratum of intelligent music-loving opinion which
is still waiting for the presentation to itself of
the player in an orderly and intelligent manner,
on the basis of its .being an intelligible instrument,
with definite values and definite limitations, which
can be sold at a fair price for what it will do, not
for what it is falsely supposed to do and be. "Cul-
tivate this," one might say to the dealer, "and you
need not in the least worry about the competition
of the talking machine; nor need you imagine that
all the work you have done in the player business
is gone to pot. You" need not think that you must
begin all over again selling something else. Use
intelligence and you will find that you have a big-
ger field before you than ever you dreamed of in
your false, because limited, former opinion.