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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Manufacturing End of the Player Business Steadily Becoming More
Complex Through the Development of New Ideas—Little Effort Appar-
ent on the Part of Retailers to Keep Pace With That Development.
No matter how we may try to conceal it, the fact
remains t.iat the player business is steadily growing
more and more complex. We are faced with an ever
increasing rlood of new ideas, of new inventions, of
new methods of wholesale promotion. Everything
at the manufacturing end is hustle and progress.
But at the retail end we see the same indifference,
the same ignorance, and the same general wrong-
headedness as wjre general ten years ago. Some-
how or other, nevertheless, the two attitudes must
be reconciled, and it is for those who can think
to devise, if they can, practical methods. Lit us
look at the matter a little more closely.
Talk to any intelligent man engaged in the
wholesale end of the play.r business and you will
discover in nine cases out of ten a real enthusiasm
for the player as an invention and as an achieve-
ment, and a real desire to make the world the
better for it. Selfish as business doubtless is, the
fact remains that there is not a manufacturer of
players in this country who is not genuinely
proud of his product and genuinely anxious to
improve it; nor is there such a man living, "we
verily believe, who does not ardently desire to
see the retail trade and the public more enthusias-
tic, whether thi results thereof are altogether
considered in their relation to his personal ben-
efit or not.
The Indifference of the Retailer.
The attitude of the designers, the experimenters,
the demonstrators, the manufacturers and their
salesmen is, in fact, quite generally all that could
be expected. But the attitude of the retailers is
definitely the opposite. Passive instead of active,
stagnant instead of progressive, the retail trade is
not really selling players at all It is allowing the
public to buy them. Can anybody in the world
imagine any oth-'r business engaged in the selling
of so technical and so complex a specialty, in
which for ten years no attempt has been made to
acquaint the public with the real virtues of the
th'ing itself, and in which the ignorance of the
retail dealer is in general extended to the most
elementary fundamentals? It may be said that
players sell on price and terms. Yes, but how
many more would be sold if the desire to buy
were based on an appreciation of the advantages
thereby to be gained, with the question of price
and terms secondary? Ford automobiles are sold,
of course, largely on their price, but the Ford
organization has worked for years to educat* the
public into an understanding of automobile values,
in order that their claims of combining low price
and good quality in the same machine might be jus-
tified. The public to-day knows automobile values
How they know th:m we can all realize, for every-
one of us knows on the average more about the
automobiles we don't sell than about the players
we do sell. In short, the automobile men have
taught the public. The player men have not even
taught themselves.
The Need of Education.
This whole problem of ours reduces to the one
word, Education. The dealer, the tuner and the
consumer alike are suffering from lack of knowl-
edge. It is ignorance that keeps the player busi-
ness in such a condition of mystery that most
dealers wish they had never heard of players. It
is ignorance that makes tuners hate and fear the
player-piano. It is ignorance that stands in the
way of improvement in construction and musical
efficiency. It is ignorance that keeps the consumer
from learning to play the player rightly. It is
ignorance that makes the musician sneer. It is
ignorance that halts the player business in the field
of distribution and promotion, makes it an exotic, a more lasting success will the specialty have.
3. Hence the greater the knowledge the retailer
thing that exists anyhow, flourishing because its own
merits happen to be so tremendous and so obvious possesses the better for him.
that not even the abysmal ignorance of the retail
4. Ignorance destroys. Knowledge builds. You
trade can kill it. And, then, turn to the other
cannot build a business by insisting on not know-
side and ask yourself what the player business ing anything about it.
would be like if it had for the last ten years been
5. Retail ignorance means also that not only the
as intelligently and shrewdly promoted as has the dealer suffers through his own mistakes, but both
automobile, a business so shrewdly promoted that he and the salesman suffer through the mistakes
a man will cheerfully pay a really enormous price of the latter and of the tuner. Ignorant sales-
for a machine with which he is buying also a con- men with their ignorant and absurd arguments
stant expense and constant trouble. The automo- hurt the player business by taking it out of the
bile is a constant expense. The player is none. realm of the practical and into the realm of mys-
The automobile has not one rational feature about
tery. Ignorant tuners with their lack of knowl-
it appealing to the social side of life, saving only edge of player construction spoil players, ruin their
its transportation ability, tnat is not matched by own reputations, create general dissatisfaction and
the player. Yet we go crazy to save up money to achieve, with the best intentions in the world, the
buy a car, and then spend all the rest of our spare worst possible business effects.
change keeping it in running order, when we have
6. Educate the tuner, educate the salesman; edu-
to be tempted with impossible prices and impos- cate yours :lf.
sible terms to buy something that gives no trou-
7. Begin to-day by going to your manufacturer,
ble, all pleasure and constant amusement, that asking him to read this article, and then finding
appeals to one of the most obvious and universal out if he does not really want to educate you.
passions, and that on its merits ought to sell a
You will probably find that he thinks as we do,
million a year. What is th_> answer? The an- and wants to put you right.
swer is ignorance.
If we, as a trade, were as well acquainted with
the facts about our specialty as the automobile
men are with facts about theirs, what a fine world
this would be for us.
What Are We Going to Do About it?
Are we going to do anything about it? We
have been talking lately a good deal about hard
times. We have done a lot in the way of smooth-
ing out the differences, the unevenness, the ab-
surdities of our financial methods. We are getting
down gradually to bedrock in the manner of
financing the business. Now it is up to us to
go a step farther. It is not enough merely to
stand where we now are, for if we stand still we
shall soon begin to go backward, relatively, for
the procession will pass on and leave us behind.
The retailer grossly deceives himself who sup-
poses that education is the business of the manu-
facturer or of the designer. It is the business of
the retailer. The retailer himself is the man who
needs education. He is the man who needs to
put aside his conceit and his self-complacency and
humble himself to study his business over again,
until he learns what the player-piano really is.
How much of the stupidity, the downright foolish-
ness that exists in our trade arises from com-
plete ignorance of the principles that govern the
mechanism? When manufacturers are compelled
by ignorant clamor to use methods of construc-
tion that run contrary to their own better judg-
ment in every sense then we are getting to a con-
dition of affairs that is almost—as Artemus Ward
used to say—"2 mutch." Can anybody imagine
Henry Ford or Henry B. Joy altering for the
worse an important feature of construction in his
cars because some dealers insist that it is easier
to persuade the prospect to buy if this alteration
be made? No, we cannot imagine it! Then why,
in the name of all that is sensible, should the
dealer exercise in pure ignorance of facts this
despotic power in our business. The answer again
is simply ignorance.
A Few Suggestions Worth Noting.
Let us make a humble suggestion. Let us ask
every retailer who reads these words to contem-
plate at his leisure the following propositions:
1. The success of any specialty depends ulti-
mately upon public appreciation.
2. The more intelligent this appreciation the
RECENT HERBERT CO. PUBLICITY.
An excellent piece of printed literature was sent
out recently in the shape of two clippings of music
roll paper. One showed rope stock paper, out of
which Herbert "Square-cut" music rolls are made;
the other clipping showed the ordinary wood stock
paper, which is much lower in price. By having
these two samples a dealer can make tests and
comparisons and then be familiar with the different
qualities of paper.
F. E. Herbert, head of the Herbert Co., Newark,
N. J., who created this snappy piece of sales litera-
ture, had printed on the piece of rope stock:
"This paper is strong and durable and will resist
wear and tear; it will continue to be pliable indefi-
nitely and will always adhere to the tracker suffi-
ciently to prevent the entrance of air except through
the perforations. Rope paper is the only kind that
is known to possess these very essential character-
istics and to give the best results, so that neither
the roll nor the player will be unjustly condemned.
Manila rope is made of the inner fiber of the plant
abaca, a native of the Philippine Islands. Paper
made of this stock has strength, durability and
last pliabilty, unequaled by that made by any sub-
stitute as yet discovered. Herbert 'Square-cut'
rolls are made of Manila rope paper."
Commercial and
Parlor Players,
Orchestrions
and Player
Organs
equipped with
Holtzer-Cabot
Motors
give satisfactory music at all times
You can always depend on our motors to
run smoothly and quietly
Standardize on H-C Motor
Equipment and Keep Your
Customers Satisfied
THE HOLTZER CABOT ELECTRIC CO.
CHICAGO, ILL., and BOSTON, MASS.