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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
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Dealers Must Educate the Public to an Appreciation of the Value of
High Glass Rolls by Featuring Quality, Instead of Cheapness—The
Increasing Manufacturing Costs Threaten to Raise Retail Prices.
To face facts is always to take a healthy mental
attitude. When we know what is wrong we are
half way toward rectification. The music roll busi-
ness, let us confess it, is in a condition less than
satisfactory. Manufacturers and retailers alike are
complaining, though there is no similarity in their
plaints otherwise. The manufacturer says that the
dealer does not care for music rolls, that he does
not appreciate the time and labor that have to be
put into the making of satisfactory rolls, that he
does not try to sell good Volls, that he asks only for
what is cheapest, and sells, or tries to sell, only
what he simply has to sell in order to satisfy public
demand.
The dealer retorts that the public will not spend
good money for rolls; that the cheaper the roll is
the better it is liked; that public taste cannot be
gauged, and that it is the height of absurdity to
try to force on people what they don't want; final-
ly, that the music roll is a necessary evil, and it
would be a good thing if it could be got rid of.
Now, allowing, for the sake of stifling any ad-
vance objection, that we have stated the case as
strongly as possible, and that it would be practical
to put it more mildly without losing grasp on facts,
we have here a state of affairs anything but satis-
factory. The business plainly needs a general
"jacking up," and it is the duty of a trade news-
paper to fin/1 out, if it can, both what is the cause
of the trouble and what are the possible remedies
therefor. We have been for some time past watch-
ing carefully the course of events in the music roll
branch of the industry and have consulted many
persons of eminence engaged therein. From what
these gentlemen have said, and from our own ob-
servations, we feel competent to make the follow-
ing remarks and suggestions:
The Very Cheap Roll.
Some time ago everybody was shouting that
the very cheap roll had come, not only to stay, but
to be the mainstay of the business; that the public
would not buy more expensive rolls, and that the
so-called "cheap" roll would be the beginning of a
new era in the industry. Have the predictions
come true? Unhappily, they have not. The very
cheap roll has taken its place alongside the older
editions and has remained where it was put, with-
out creating any special excitement anywhere.
Fashions in popular music have come and gone,
manufacturers have been compelled to strain every
nerve each month to rush out the very latest stuff
on the market, and yet nobody seems to be making
any money; at least the retailers so declare about
themselves. And if the retailers don't make money,
it is a fairly shrewd guess that the manufacturers
are not a great deal better off. Again, what is the
matter?
To answer this insistent question is our chief
business. Plainly, the very cheap roll affords no
solution for the retailer's troubles. The fact is
pretty well established by this time that the very
cheap roll does not attract profitable trade and does
not give a volume of sales that will make up for the
diminished profit per unit sold.
The Quality Idea.
We make a suggestion, simple, crude—rankly so.
It is one of those things that look too simple to be
important. Yet it rests on a basis of business logic
unanswerable. We say plainly, and without any
redundancy of language, that the fault of the whole
business lies in the neglect of quality.
If we look over the history of any specialty busi-
ness we find that the big successes have been made
always by keeping up quality and price, not by cut-
ting price and then being obliged to cut quality in
consequence. Compare the typewriter, the safety
razor, the sewing machine. Don't compare the
automobile, because that is no longer a "specialty"
business. Automobiles have gone down in price,
on the average, but have gone down by classes.
The automobile appeals to all purses and classes of
people. The high-priced automobile is as high as
ever, the medium-priced has gone down a little,
and the low-priced has remained almost stationary
for two or three years. Quality improves and
price reductions are made only on the basis of in-
creased output. If the roll business were worked
on that plan, prices might go down to ten cents
a roll if only output were great enough. So we
need not drag in the motor car. The truth remains
that quality is the necessary basis of all successful
specialty merchandising.
Educating the Public.
Unhappily, it is as easy to educate wrongly as
rightly, as easy to drag the public into a totally
distorted thought toward some business idea as to
draw them toward right though and action. In
the music roll business we have been shamefully
neglectful. Beginning with the early discovery
that to produce successful selling the public must
be educated, we were faced with the alternative of
trying to educate them up to the best and so create
a natural demand therefor, or of seeking to in-
veigle them by offers of excessive discounts, of
free rolls with the purchase of player-pianos, and
lastly, of a general sweeping reduction in list prices.
The first is the right, the courageous, the success-
ful method. The second is the indirect and the un-
successful.
The Present Tendency.
Let us face the facts and tell the truth. We are
not doing what we should like to be doing in the
roll business. The tendency for five years past has
been (1) to demand from manufacturers a con-
stant supply of the very latest music; (2) to make
constant demands for reductions in price; (3) to
try to attract custom solely on account of price;
(4) to neglect entirely all the quality features of
rolls that might of themselves form talking points
for selling; (5) to look on the entire roll business
as something like the tuning department (as gen-
erally conducted), that is, as a necessary evil.
Now, if our practice has been without the effects
we should like to see realized, why on earth don't
we change it? The way to make money in music
roll selling is quite evidently not the way we have
been pursuing. Then it is plain that we must
choose a new way.
Featuring Quality.
The solution is simple. Let us stop talking
cheapness and begin to talk quality. Let us stop
making displays wholly of cheap music rolls and
make displays of good ones. Let us begin from
this day to make the public in our respective com-
munities see that the music roll is a piece of worth-
while merchandise, which costs money and brains
to make, which is worth what is asked for it, and
without which the player-piano is useless. There,
indeed, is the main point. Without the music roll
the player-piano is useless. Why, then, endanger
the public's satisfaction with an expensive instru-
ment by encouraging the use of inferior music
rolls?
There has been far too much displaying of the
very cheap music rolls and laying of emphasis
upon them. They should be relegated to the back-
ground, with the statement that they can be had if
desired, but without recommendation. Place from
this day onward the emphasis on the quality roll.
Let us learn something about the making of music
rolls, something about the processes that enter into
this manufacture; let us in our advertising show
the public something of these wonderful and in-
tricate processes, and especially let us talk quality
all the time. Moreover, since certain classes of
music are so ephemeral that they are literally here
to-day and gone to-morrow, and since" there is no
piofit in stocking up with them in good editions,
let the very cheap roll be confined to that sort of
stuff and let the standards, the popular ballads
that go on for years, the Carrie Jacobs-Bond, the
Ethelbert Nevin and Victor Herbert, and such like
music, be pushed for all it is worth, talking quality
all the time.
Does that sound academic? Don't think it for a
moment. The simple truth is that the public have
never yet been in the slightest subjected to any
educative process, and consequently the effect upon
them of any educational compaign for stimulating
quality demand in music rolls cannot be judged in
advance. It has never been tried. At the very
lowest, everything else but quality has been tried
and has failed. Now let us try the quality argu-
ment, which is the true argument, and see 'how
that goes. It is the unanimous opinion of those
best competent to judge that it will and must go.
The Threatened Price Advance.
Speaking on this matter the other day, one of the
most successful manufacturers said to The Re-
view : "It looks now as though the way the price of
everything is going up, the roll manufacturers are
going to have a hard time making any money on
rolls. Moreover, prices, have been cut so much
and discounts have so gone to pieces that it's al-
most impossible to make any profit." Another
manufacturer says: "The cost of manufacturing
music rolls is steadily increasing; paper prices
have advanced tremendously, cardboard has ad-
vanced likewise, and, in fact, every single item en-
tering into the manufacture of music rolls has
advanced in cost. It seems, therefore, only logical
that dealers should start to impress the public with
the idea that music rolls possess real quality, as
by so doing they will protect their own interests
first of all."
In other words, retailers, read between the lines!
Prices may have to advance. Then, if you have
not educated your public to understand music roll
quality, where will you be? You cannot do with-
out music rolls, say what you like. The very cheap
roll has seen its best day, and its production may
be seriously affected by advancing costs. Why get
caught between two fires? Why not anticipate the
inevitable and begin to prepare ere it be too late
for a sales policy based on quality, instead of on
bargains and cheap-jackery?
FALL BOARD FOR PLAYER»PIANOS.
WASHINGTON, D. C, March 20.—The Baldwin
Co., Cincinnati, O., is the owner through assign-
ment by Robt. A. Gaily, same place, of patent No.
1,174,845 for a fall board for players. The in-
ventor claims that previous structures of fall
boards to cover both keys and music rolls, in
musical instruments having player rolls, etc., close-
ly over the manual keys, especially in such forms
of pianos as grands or similar horizontal cases,
have caused great enlargement and distortion of
the instrument; whereas the present invention pro-
vides a double fall of little difference in size than
the ordinary, no increase of inside measurement
of case, and of equally good appearance.
The Hollenberg Music Co. has secured a
twenty-seven-year lease on a site at 415 Main
street, Little Rock, Ark., on which a three-story
building will be erected, for which plans are now-
being drawn.