Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, JUNE 25, 1921
The Future Success of the Player-piano Business Depends Upon Retailers
Adopting a Sound Merchandising Policy, Which Consists in Selling the Idea
of Personal Production of Good Music Through the Medium of the Player
"A sound merchandising policy is the only
practical foundation for a successful retail busi-
ness."
That statement is unexceptionable and it is
not at all likely that a single reader of this
paper could be found to differ with its senti-
ment. But when one comes to apply the senti-'
nient practically differences of opinion at once
arise and the air is filled with the clamor of
contention. For, in truth, there is no agree-
ment, either in our business or in any other,
as to what constitutes sound merchandising
policy. Yet, whatever may be the case in other
lines of business, there can be no possible doubt
that the player business at least needs some-
thing like a general recognition and practice of
some definite policy in production and sale; a
policy of merchandising, in fact, which will fit
the needs of the public and bring prosperity to
the trade in the only possible way, namely, by
giving the people what the people can be
brought to see that they need. The following
paragraphs are a contribution to the perennial
discussion of the subject, made rather more
than usually pointed just now by the undoubted
fact that the player business is in a chastened
frame of mind and will endure a little lecturing
for its own good.
The Popular Fallacy
We are always talking of giving the people
what the people want. But no popular saying
ever enshrined a more glaring fallacy or was
further from the truth. The people's wants
have to be constantly discovered for them. If
it were left to the people themselves to say
what they should have there never would have
been any player business, or any piano business
either. Neither would there have been tele-
phones or street cars or most of the other con-
veniences. All inventions, discoveries or im-
provements, save such as relate to the barest
necessities of human life, haue to. be developed
by enthusiasts and preached to the people until
their utility has become commonly known.
"Giving the people what the people want" is a
sentiment which had its origin in the amuse-
ment business as an excuse on the part of vul-
gar and stupid theatrical producers, who feared
(and still fear) that any thing above the level
of the lowest minds will frighten away the
crowds from the box-office. Wherever one
finds this sentiment guiding the policy of a
business house it may be taken for granted
that the heads of the house are themselves in-
capable of enjoying anything which appeals to
the higher side of human nature.
But this does not mean that we should try
to educate the people up to that which they
cannot reach, save by painful and slow effort.
The "what-the-people-want" protagonist always
accuses those who disagree with him of want-
ing to "educate the people," and always says,
with a sneer, that money is not made in that
way. Well, in a certain sense the statement is
true; but it is not true in the ordinary sense,
and especially it is not true in what relates
to music and the other arts. The people's
taste in music, when it is once given a chance
to express itself, is always found to be much
better than the sneerers suppose. It scarcely
ever gets a chance to express itself, however,
and that is the whole trouble with the music
business. It is the whole trouble with the
player business too.
Judging Others by One's Self
The merchant who has neither musical imagi-
nation nor love for the finer things, no matter
how undeveloped this may be, naturally judges
others by himself. He, therefore, regulates his
ideas of what the people want by what he him-
self wants. If "he does not know or care
whether a piano is in tune, if he thinks all player
music above the level of "Barking Dog Blues"
is "high-brow stuff," then he will have his pianos
out of tune and his player sales will be solely
to the sort of persons who like what he likes.
Then this merchant will wonder why the people
don't buy more players and will conclude that
he had better get a few reproducing pianos.
He will get them, and what will he do with
them? If one thing is more certain than an-
other it is that the reproducing piano appeals
to the higher senses. Imagine a reproducing
piano in a store out of tune and equipped with
a lot of music rolls representing music which
the proprietor of the store would never will-
ingly listen to. How much real enthusiasm and
inspiration can be put into the sale of these
instruments in cases like this? The question is
its own answer.
There is, in a word, a real, live and imme-
diate need for a merchandising policy which
shall represent the only successful idea in all
retail selling, namely, the idea of leading the
people along to appreciate the goods one is
offering. That means (1) having the right sort
of article to sell, (2) believing in it oneself, (3)
if it be an article which needs demonstration,
demonstrating it with skill and enthusiasm.
It has always been the belief of many people
that the player business was at its best during
the formative. year& when the idea of a "piano
player" was first being put forward to the peo-
ple.
The extremely high level of the adver-
tising, the careful demonstration and the gen-
erally well-thought-out policy of selling were
in sharp contrast with the very imperfect and
defective instruments whose sale was the ob-
ject of all this high-class work. It was the de-
fective nature of the early players and not at
all the sales policy which was responsible for
the slowness of progress in those early days.
And now, when we have better players, or at
least have the experience and the ability to pro-
duce better ones, we have abandoned all wise
and well-thought-out methods and are letting
the player-piano sell itself. When we find it
does not sell itself we run after strange, new de-
vices of all sorts, striving desperately to find a
patent automatic, self-selling machine which
will run the business for us and spare us the
trouble of working and, still more, of thinking.
The sound merchandising policy which we
have all been looking for has all the time been
right at our hand. It may be expressed and
summed up perfectly in a single sentence. It
consists in selling the personal production of
music to the masses of the people.
What the Player Is For
*
That is what the player-piano is for: to give
to the masses the means for the personal pro-
duction of music. The greater number of those
who buy will be poorly equipped in musical
experience, but most of them will love music;
in fact, we may say that all of them will. If
they are told at the very beginning that this in-
strument needs no skill to play, and that you
merely have to sit with your arms folded and
pump, then they will be, for the moment, de-
lighted and will think how nice it is. But in-
side of two months' use of that player in the
home the delight will have become disappoint-
ment. Why? Because the limits of the instru-
ment will have apparently been reached. The
customer will find that it does just so much,
and soon will be so accustomed to this that
there will no longer be novelty or fun in the
use of it. Now, if that customer had been
shown how to get the first slam-bang fun out
of the player, indeed, but also had been shown
that there is more to it than that, the result
would have been different. The normal person
likes nice music, music agreerbly and softly
played. That person would like to get such
music from the player, but does not get it be-
cause he does not know how to get it. Teach
him or her how to get it and you have a sale
made and a friend made, too.