Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
7i
A Timely Question, One of Vital Significance to Every Retailer and Manu-
facturer, is That Discussed so Illuminatingly^Herewith, Namely, "What
Are You Doing to Develop The Sale and Promote Interest in the Player"
Two weeks ago The Review published a sug-
gestive and striking article by C. Alfred Wagner,
president of the Musical Instrument Sales Co. Those
who read it do not need to be reminded that it was
rilled with words of wisdom. Those who did not
read need not suppose that we are going to try to
improve on it here, for we are not. its subject
has already been treated by its author better than
we could treat it, anyhow. But we wish to use one
sentence from that article as a text. It ran : "What
are you doing to develop the sale and promote in-
terest in the player-piano?"
Mr. Wagner himself is obliged to answer as
most of us must answer, that we are doing next
to nothing. It is sad, but true. And we are to-day
seeing the result in our neglect and indifference
to our highest business interests in the rapid dis-
tancing of the player-piano by the talking machine.
To Improve the Situation.
To sit and worry about the situation is of little
use; we must see whether we can do anything to
improve it. In point of fact we can do much.
If you listen to some retailers and some manu-
facturers these days you will find much talk about
the electric motor-operated player-piano. There is
no doubt that a development of the player idea
which abolishes the physical effort necessary for
the playing of the ordinary player-piano is, in cer-
tain directions, a good thing. It enables the dealer
to reach certain classes of trade that perhaps can-
not be reached so well otherwise. But, in fact, we
feel called on here rather to point out the simple
fact that because this form of player has been
developed and is finding a place of its own there
is no necessity for assuming that no other sort of
player-piano is going to be sold in the future. To
put the matter in another way, there is danger of
jumping to the conclusion that the electrically-
operated player-piano is something forced on the
trade by reason of the fact that everybody is too
lazy to learn to play the player-piano tolerably
well of themselves.
Now this is a dangerous and yet a common as-
sumption. It is an assumption that is being made
by a great many people in the trade. It leads in-
evitably to the supposition that you cannot sell
player-pianos on their merits as musical instru-
ments, but that they must be "put over." This
again leads to the mania for special sales at ri-
diculous prices, to the giving away of music rolls
and to the general neglect of any attempt at decent
demonstration.
Disposing the Public Mind.
The plain truth of the matter is that the public
mind would be, if anything, far more favorably
disposed to the player-piano than is generally sup-
posed if only the salesmen would leave that mind
alone. If the player-piano were simply left to it-
self and allowed to make its own way, the prob-
ability is that its intrinsic merit would carry it to
success without the slightest co-operation on the
part of the trade. For it is a fact, amazing but
correct, that when you introduce the player-piano
to an intelligent man or woman, to a person accus-
tomed to think and sufficiently music-loving to want
music, then you have started someone on the road
to becoming a player-piano fan, as it were, a player-
piano enthusiast of the deepest dye. The writer
can speak from a long and varied experience in as-
serting that he has never known a case where the
player-piano has failed to root itself deeply in the
enthusiastic affections of a family where intelli-
gence reigns throughout the domestic circle and
where the player-piano proposition was originally
presented in an intelligent manner.
Of course, if you begin by putting all emphasis
on the purely mechanical by swearing that no in-
telligence at all is needed and by demonstrating in
a way that awakens no interest in the mind of any-
body but a fox-trot lunatic or a caterpillar-crawl
connoisseur, you must expect to sell only to people
mentally lazy and to have them ask why all the
work cannot be done for them, since the thing is
mechanical and sounds mechanical, anyway. Why
expect anything else when you deliberately prepare
for it?
It is with sincere pleasure that I am able to present the
PLAYER PIANOS
FOR USE IN ALL DEPARTMENTS
of THE CONSERVATORY OF CHICAGO
as, after a thorough investigation, I have found it to be one of the
very best pianos which has come to my notice.
The Conservatory of Chicago.
President
What has made the tremendous success of the
talking machine? Is it to be explained solely on
the grounds that there is nothing for the operator
to do except change a needle and a record? By no
means! If the sole basis of the talking machine's
appeal were that, then the talking machine would
not be what it is to-day. The talking machine suc-
ceeds because it has the tremendous appeal of the
record to back it up, and for no other reason. You
buy a talking machine because you can have artistic
interpretations of music rendered by great artists.
Vou don't buy them because you merely have to
sit and listen to them. In point of fact, the passiv-
ity of your attitude is the only cause for complaint
with the talking machine. It tends to become
monotonous simply because there is nothing to do
but listen. Is it remarkable that a great house is
bringing forward a talking machine in which the
dynamics can be controlled by the operator? Not
remarkable, but exceedingly significant.
Something of the Remedy.
In these pages we have proposed over and over
again the remedy. It is so simple. Perhaps that
is why people overlook it. That remedy is hinted
at by Mr. Wagner in the article to which we called
attention above. It is, in fact, the application to
the player-piano industry of the principles which
have governed the advertising of every successful
product, such as the automobile, the talking ma-
chine, the canned eatable, and many others—the
principle of creating desire.
Now, the best and certainly the truest principle
in the world of things is that you cannot create
a desire permanent in character for anything in the
world merely on the basis of price. Nobody ever
made a success in selling things simply because they
were cheap. No industry of the specialty type that
needs to be explained and demonstrated ever was
successfully sold on the basis of being easy to buy.
The ten-cent store does not succeed because its
prices are ten cents, but because for ten cents it gives
a good value, and still more because the fact of its
being a ten-cent store naturally makes it a sort of
general marketing place for small household goods
and trifles. The fact that a lot of cheap music is
sold there does not alter this side in the least, for
the cheap music is offered to bring people to the
place so that they will buy things which yield a
profit.
The Creation of a Desire.
The creation of a desire can be accomplished by
appealing to people's innate pride, to their love for
the beautiful, to their desire to improve themselves
or to educate their children, and to other instincts.
In all cases the broad principle may be laid down
that a permanent basis for the sale of a specialty
must be found in creating the intelligent desire of
intelligent people.
To get away from abstraction and to concrete
fact we make the assertion that the player business
will blossom and flourish like the green bay trees
when the trade has succeeded in interesting in it
the intelligent people of this country, and not be-
fore.
The intelligent people of this country, speaking
broadly, are not interested in the player. They are
either disgusted with it or afraid it will spoil their
natural musical talent or that of their children.
They look upon it as a mechanical substitute for
real playing. And especially they have no use for
the kind of music they hear from the player-pianos
owned by their neighbors. That, in brief, is the sit-
uation. Of course, there are exceptions, but a
few individual saving clauses are of little account
in so large a volume as this we are studying.
Now, it has been urged recently that the one
(Continued on page 8.)