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MUSIC TRADE
1
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PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, JUNE 24, 1922
The Player Business at the Crossroads
The Belief in Some Quarters That the Foot-power Player Must Be Superseded by the Electric or Automatic Player Is Not
Entirely Well Founded and Careful Thought Should Be Given to the Immediate Future of the
Straight Player if the Industry Is to Continue Its Upward Progress
The conventions with their displays of new
things and their general excitement are over
for another twelvemonth. Whatever we may
have been able to learn from them there is one
thing certain, that the opinion of the larger
half of the trade upon the immediate future of
the player-piano 'has been clearly demonstrated.
1 here are manufacturers and dealers who make
no bones about saying that, to them, the hope of
the player business is the electric player-piano.
It is well that this fact should be emphasized.
It is well that there should now be some plain
speaking. For we are dealing, not with personal
prejudice, not with sentiment or regret, but with
the whole question of the future of the piano
business. There may be some who believe that
the future can be left to take care of itself. There
are some who say, in effect, "If the piano business
goes to pieces we go into another business, that is
all." But the body of the piano trade cannot look
at things in this calm manner. They cannot but
be anxious about the future, for they cannot but
see that the piano trade is approaching rapidly
another critical point in its career, comparable in
importance with that crisis which was reached
when the player-piano first became an element of
great importance.
What the Trade Is Thinking
To put the whole matter in a sentence: There
is now a decided and growing tendency among
some manufacturers and merchants to believe
that the player-piano has failed of its purpose
and must now be replaced by a wholly auto-
matic instrument, reproducing, or purporting to
reproduce, human playing, previously recorded,
by means wholly impersonal.
Questions That Must Be Asked
If this belief be well founded—for there is no
question of its present popularity—then it is evi-
dent that the piano trade is on the eve of great
changes revolutionary in their nature and pos-
sibly destined to be catastrophic in their effects.
It is evident, in fact, that if the foot-expression
player-piano is to be discarded the process of re-
placing it with something else will involve vast
changes in the whole attitude of the trade
toward music. These changes cannot but have
the most striking effects upon the trade's future.
Naturally, then, we find ourselves asking some
pertinent questions. We ask: Is this belief about
the foot-player well founded? What will be the
effects upon the trade if the foot-player dis-
appears? Does the automatic player offer a solu-
tion of the problem of selling more pianos?
These questions are pressing for answer.
The trade, if left to itself, would most likely
drift on and allow the course of events to be
determined without conscious effort to guide and
direct it. But to leave matters alone at this
stage would be to invite disaster. A crisis im-
pends in which clear thought is acutely needed.
In this matter personal prejudice must be
put aside. If it could be shown that the best
interests of the music industries demanded the
abolition of the pneumatic element from the
piano entirely we should advocate such abolition,
at any cost to our personal beliefs. So, if
now it can be proved that the abolition of the
foot-player is desirable in the highest interests of
the trade, we shall be found advocating the aboli-
tion. Till then, however, we shall continue to ad-
vocate what we believe to be right and for
the best interests of the trade.
Novelty, Not Superiority
No one will try to deny that the foot-player
has not been doing well lately. But then no one
will say that any kind of piano has been doing
well lately. The whole musical instrument busi-
ness has been depressed, nor is there the slight-
est reason to suppose that the foot-player has
been worse off than the straight piano or the
talking machine. The automatic electric player,
however, has come on to the market at a time
of great general depression. Its novelty has
stimulated the interest of merchants sick of
thinking up schemes to put across the foot-player
upon a public unable to play it properly. That
the inability of the public to play and its con-
sequent weariness of the foot-player are largely
the fault of the trade need, perhaps, not for
the' moment be emphasized. For whatever rea-
son, then, the electric player has captured trade
interest and is now being eagerly rushed after as
if it bore within itself the seed of some miracle
for producing sales. We are told on all sides
that this is the instrument which all will want
to buy. There are great excitement and much
enthusiasm—for the day!
Stumbling on New Strata
But how deep is the enthusiasm, how genuine
the excitement? Let us be serious about this.
A merchant may to-day find it comparatively
easy to place a certain number of electric players
at prices somewhat higher than he has been
getting for foot-players. But what does this
mean? Does this indicate any uprising of popular
favor? Not necessarily at all! It far more prob-
ably means that, without realizing it, the mer-
chants are stumbling upon another stratum of
public taste, another section of prospective de-
mand which they have not before dug up.
Because It Looks Easy!
On the other hand, does the present excitement
among dealers indicate any profound conviction
that the message of music can be carried to the
American home by these new automatics better
than by any other instruments? To hear some
persons talk one might suppose so. Yet a very
slight acquaintance with dealer mentality will
assure one that most of the retail men are in-
terested precisely in whatever will appeal to
them as easy to sell. If you can show the dealer
that such and such a thing will bring him sales
he will not unnaturally like that thing, to the ex-
clusion of other less promising things, irrespec-
tive of the real merits in either case.
Yet, from the standpoint of individuality, the
foot-player is an instrument which promises far
more to its owner than any ordinary electric
can possibly promise, much less give. The
writer has the utmost admiration for the real
reproducing piano, for the art instrument which
actually is designed to co-operate with true
artists in recording and reproducing their work
for the musical benefit of the whole people. But
the commercial tendency is naturally toward a
standardized expressiveness, which already shows
itself inferior in respect of musical value to the
foot-player played by any ordinarily intelligent
person who has been shown how to manipu-
late it.
Ah! but there's the rub! The foot-player has
been sold by most dealers on the claim th,at it
does not need to be manipulated, but only
pumped. Is it any wonder that it is put aside
in favor of a machine that at least gives a little
expression, and that without physical effort on
the part of the owner?
Intelligence Still Indispensable
But does any one suppose that the new players
can be sold without just as much intelligence as
any other kind of player has ever needed? On
the contrary, a merchant's true piano intelligence
may be perfectly measured by his skill in carry-
ing out a demonstration on a large scale of a
real reproducing piano. If he can do this artis-
tically and in a manner worthy the dignity of a
fine instrument then we may know he has the
intelligence to handle any player sales problem.
No element in the player business is self-suf-
ficing. For each there is a place. The foot-
player is pre-eminently the instrument for the
creative, the positive, the ambitious temperament.
The electric, purely automatic instrument is the
thing for the indifferent, the tired, the jazzy.
The reproducing piano is the instrument for the
cultured, for the connoisseur who seeks the ex-
pert interpretation of the best in m u s i c Each
type has its place, each its sales technique, each
its sales value. Only by the union of all can the
music demands of the people be filled.
Personally, we believe that every home which
can stand the price should have both a foot-player
and a true reproducing piano, nor are we at all
sure that the ultimate solution will not lie in
the combination of the two in one case. The
casting of the foot-player entirely aside in favor
of the electric, however, is a move worthy of
earnest thought before it is put into general
execution.