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PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 30, 1922
The Lessons of Nineteen
Twenty-two
A Year Which Started With Despondent Feelings in the Industry Has Come Through Triumphantly—Interesting Analysis
of Developments Would Show What Might Have Been Done and Can Be Done Now That
We Are About to Open a New Leaf in the History of 1923
Well, here is the end of the year. Nineteen
hundred and twenty-two has been lived through.
We had started the New Year with the heaviest
feelings of depression, lightened only by hope.
We have come through. We have even been
surprised during some recent months with the
comparative magnitude of the business that
suddenly seemed to be thrust upon us. On the
whole we have the utmost reason for gratitude
and for feeling that the fates have, after all,
been kind to us. Have we also learned any
lessons from our rather mixed experiences?
One might hope so, for certainly those ex-
periences will not have gone for much if they
have left no marks behind them. The music
industries have come through a bad time, but
the music industries have also proved once
again that they possess a power of survival
which is almost unsurpassed in commercial his-
tory. It seems that no storms of commercial
depression can suffice to destroy the need for
music. Yet no one can pretend that the mer-
chandising of music is particularly intelligent.
Still, whether we all are agreed on the point
or not, the fact remains that the great lessons
of 1922 to the music industries and especially to
the player industry are merchandising lessons.
If they are well learned the future of the player
business is absolutely assured.
We Sell What It Will Do
To put the matter in the fewest and simplest
words, the lesson that has been taught us by
the logic of events is that when we undertake
to sell instruments of music, especially auto-
matic or semi-automatic instruments, we have
to visualize the selling of a commodity which
has nothing to do with the material of which
the instrument is made and nothing to do, in
principle at least, with its price. We have, in
fact, to sell an intangible idea, the idea of what
the instrument will do. That is the biggest
single lesson the year has taught, ox should
have taught us; namely, that we are not selling
player-pianos—we are selling what player-
pianos will do.
One of the great movements during the year
has been the movement toward greater and
greater publicity for the reproducing piano. It
is unfortunate that there has been so much mis-
use of that term "reproducing," so much, in
fact, that the American Piano Co. has begun
to use a new and distinctive term to describe
its Ampico instruments. But, assuming that
every reader of these words knew what is
meant by the words "reproducing piano," we
repeat that the year 1922 has been remarkable
above all else for the strenuous and successful
efforts which have been made to popularize
these instruments. Now, what has been the
basis of all the publicity? It has been what
these instruments will do. Thev will marvel-
ously remake for us the interpretations of art-
ists. Their cost must always, in comparison
with that of other musical instruments, seem
high in actual figures; but they are not bought
on consideration primarily of the figures which
represent their price. They are bought because
they will do certain things, and the price is a
secondary consideration with those who buy them.
Output and Price
This principle is, of course, of the utmost
value from a merchandising standpoint and
should be the basis of all successful player-
piano selling. Yet it should not be allowed so
to dominate, on one side, as to obscure the
fact that there must be a due relation between
prices and service. In other words, if the
novelty, the excellence of the results and the
exclusiveness be alone considered, it is likely
that the demand for any instrument will be
confined to a certain stratum of society where
price cuts little or no figure. Yet it is evident
that no healthy industry can be reared on the
idea of the highest possible price, for this al-
ways means also the smallest output.
The ideal toward which all industries ought
to aim is the ideal of maximum output at min-
imum profit per unit. This is the only suc-
cessful combination- of factors, for output bears
a mathematical relation to unit profit. There-
fore, we must link up with the first part of
our merchandising lesson the second part,
which teaches us that the ideal is maximum
output based on minimum profit per unit, cul-
minating in minimum possible price.
We have thus a double lesson to learn and
to apply. On the one hand all our merchan-
dising method must be built upon the simple
fact that what we sell is what our instruments
will do, and on the other hand we have to
learn and endeavor to apply the truth that our
future must depend upon working out better
and better methods of manufacture, whereby to
reduce our costs, so that we may apply the
reductions in lowering our prices to the con-
sumer. Insofar as we continue to be able to
do this latter shall we also be able to increase
our sales, our output and thus our profits.
Relation of This to Labor
There has been a lot of talk recently about
shortages in the music industries. Such short-
ages are likely to be found in future whenever
competing industries are showing reasonable
prosperity; for such industries, being mostly
organized on a more modern plan, are able, by
reason of large output, to pay higher wages.
The crying need in this case is then, again,
how to get increased output.
A poorly paid industry is not and cannot be
a prosperous industry. No one can tell, until
it has been thoroughly tried, how much can be
done toward cutting down costs and reducing
prices in accordance. When the trial has been
scientifically made some people will be very
much astonished. Likewise, the way will then
be opened for making the music industries good
payers from the point of view of the worker.
Scientific Selling Campaign
Again, if we are going to increase our out-
put of, say, player-pianos in any form, we have
to do this by the only practical way, namely,
by coupling with efforts to reduce costs and
apply the savings to reduction of prices, addi-
tional efforts to base our selling campaigns on
scientific foundations. Now, a selling campaign
on any kind of player-piano and music roll
proposition is a campaign based on the idea of
music in the home. This may be embodied in
a four-thousand-dollar reproducing grand or in
a five-hundrcd-dollar foot pedal player up-
right; but in either case the basic principle is
the same. Our campaigners in the higher field
see this, but their method of campaigning
causes the cost of their wonderful instruments
to be relatively high. This limits their output.
Music to the Masses
If, besides working along just precisely these
lines, we were to put our salesmanship behind
a campaign to sell the idea of music in the
home more directly to the masses, should we
not be able to increase our output even more
rapidly than it is ever likely to be increased
through the reproducing piano alone, promoted
as that apparently has to be? The question is
very intricate, but there is a great deal to be
said for the affirmative side of it. The Gul-
bransen idea is decidedly successful and is
based upon just what we are discussing; namely,
bringing the idea of music in the home, at a
moderate cost and without frills, to the masses.
Moreover, what is the Educator music roll sys-
tem of the Q R S Music Co. if not a further
extension of this idea, worked out so as to co-
operate with the other branches of the indus-
try? There are men who perceive that such
merchandising principles are in principle correct.
There are two kinds of industry, one based
on small output and high prices, one based on
large output and small prices. Which is the
more successful? We all know that the latter
is pre-eminently more successful in every way.
The piano business in all its phases has always,
however, been of the first kind. It is worth
while considering how it might be turned over'
gradually to the second class. If this happens,
as the experiences of the past year plainly in-
dicate to be intensely desirable, it will come
about only when we have rethought our mer-
chandising problems, brought music to the
hearts of the masses and come to see that it
is easier to be prosperous on large turnover
with small profit than on small turnover with
large, unit profit.