Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, MARCH 30, 1918
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Keen Competition and the High Cost of Doing Business Have Necessitated a
New Movement in Music Roll Merchandising—Whatithe Q R S Go. and the
Imperial Player Co. Have Done Towards Creating Interest in Their Rolls
It is always a satisfaction to know that one's
ideas are correct, even if one has to wait a long
time for the confirmation. It is even pleasanter
to know that ideas which one sets forth amidst
chilling silence are seen, in course of time, to be
well founded; and then are taken up by those
to whom they were originally addressed. Even
when one cannot expect acknowledgment open-
ly, the tacit admission is satisfactory enough.
We have, in this Player Section, been per-
sistent workers for the most constructive and
practical methods of merchandising in respect
of all branches of the player industry. We have
always therefore tended to be somewhat ahead
of time, for the simple reason that if one is
looking ahead one cannot be looking from side
to side, or backwards, at the same time. But
we have had the experience of seeing one after
another of our notions first acknowledged to be
practical, then taken up and lastly made com-
mon practice. It appears that something of the
sort is going to happen again.
Readers of these pages are well aware how
The Review has always and consistently urged
that the merchandising of music rolls presents
problems new and somewhat complex, but which
are just as much capable of solution as any
others. The Review has been consistent in
pointing out that when the music roll came into
the piano business with the player-piano it
brought with it to the piano merchant's store
a host of new conditions. It is not a matter
for argument that the music roll must either
be made profitable or be neglected. It has not
been made profitable, speaking broadly, and it
has therefore been neglected.
Now, however, that the competition, the high
cost of doing business and the general low prices
of goods have brought the player-piano down
to a point where it is only a little more profit-
able than the straight piano, we can no longer
neglect any avenue through which we can draw
profitable sales; and the music roll is therefore
obtaining an amount of attention it has never
had before.
Two New Methods
It is the special purpose of the following re-
marks to draw attention to two methods now
being brought forward by manufacturers of
music rolls for the direct purpose of stimulating
public interest in their goods. This paper has
from the first contended that some one must
educate the public up to the better class of
music roll and that only the manufacturer can
do this. We have more than once shown in
detail that the public generally have been edu-
cated in the past to consider the music roll
something the reverse of legitimate, because
they have always had rolls given them free with
the purchase of player-pianos. The music roll,
in a word, has not been really thought of as
"real" music, like the printed sheet. The value
of the roll has therefore been little appreciated,
and it has been the experience of dealers that
purchasers of player-pianos usually do not ac-
quire large libraries of rolls.
Obviously the difficulty is due to the lack of
appreciation on the part of the purchasing pub-
lic, a lack itself due- partly to neglect by the
manufacturers and partly to general public ig-
norance of music which is not of the cheapest
and trashiest.
But conditions are changing, and it is becom-
ing necessary to push the better class of music
as reproduced in roll form. The chances of
loss on the ordinary commercial music have
always been considerable, and by now, with ris-
ing costs and diminishing profits, it is no longer
possible to let the public demand take care of
itself. The sales of standard music, which does
not require new master rolls every week, must
be developed and intensified. How can this be
done?
This paper has for a long time been preach-
ing consistently the gospel of education. We
have often urged that when we cease to sneer
at our own products, and earnestly strive by edu-
cation and persuasion to interest the buying
public in the better class of rolls, by making the
appeal in ways that will enable us to get at
our people effectively, the response will be sat-
isfactory from the first.
The Story Roll
The Q R S Co. is one of those who have
accepted the challenge. They have produced,
as a beginning, the story roll. This is sim-
ply a music roll of some piece of genuine music,
with a running commentary on its contents
printed along the margin of the roll so that
the story unfolds as the music is played. Suit-
able prefaces are also printed on the rolls at
the beginning.
Take, for instance, a typical example of de-
scriptive music, Rubinstein's Kammenoi-Ostrow,
or Rachmaninoff's well-known Prelude in C
sharp minor. Both of these offer a splendid
field to the commentator, who will couch his
remarks in simple language, make his story
interesting and at the same time stick closely
enough to facts. It is easy,, of course, to slop
all over on a proposition like this and make it
simply silly; but there is so much information
now available as to the inspiration-and origin
of the great masterpieces of music .that it is
not necessary to draw on the heated imagina-
tion of a perhaps musically unintelligent writer.
An excellent specimen of what such a com-
mentary should be is the "story" of the Rach-
maninoff Prelude in C sharp minor, as set forth
in a Q R S story roll. The author is, in this
case, we suppose, L. S. Roberts, and he has
done his work very well indeed. He has writ-
ten a story of the music, which has not a tech-
nical word in it, and which goes on the theory
that the person who sits at the player and goes
through this music is curious, intelligent, but
uninformed; all hypotheses, quite true. He has
written an interesting story, a story which il-
luminates the music and makes it intelligible to
all; and moreover one intrinsically probable. It
is a fine piece of work.
Now the story roll has a further advantage.
You cannot help reading the story as the music
unwinds. You who play and you who read are
the same person. It is right before the one who
plays and only he, or she, gets the advantage
of reading the story while the music is being
played. Therefore everything is done to in-
terest the user of the rolls and also to induce
others to use them, too. The idea is admirable,
practical and efficient, and has already proved
its value.
"Imperial Ballads"
The other idea is less ambitious but not less
interesting in its way. The Imperial Player Co.
has published a little booklet called Imperial
ballads, a little story about them by Zema Ran-
dale. The brochure is small enough to slip into
a music roll box. It contains a portrait of Miss
Randale, and comprises a short talk, ostensibly
by that lady, setting forth the manner in which
she prepares her records of popular ballads for
publication as Imperial hand-played rolls.. The
story tells simply the whole process, bearing
hard on the personal side of the work and very
lightly on the technical side. It is very inter-
esting indeed, and shows the amount of care
and skill needed to get a satisfactory and suc-
cessful record of even a simple song. Indeed,
without any desire to conceal the fact that the
story is rather highly colored in its tone, it does
not tell other than the truth; and tells it in a
way that cannot but be popular. Following the
description of her own work, the gifted lady
demon of the keyboard goes on to tell how the
person who takes her roll to his or her player-
piano should play the same to get satisfactory
results. Here also, allowing for some pardon-
able and slight musical solecisms, the story is
well and simply, but effectively told. A list
(Continued on page 5)