Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
REVIEW
J1UJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXXVI. No. 3
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, IDC, 373 4th Ave., New York, N. Y. Jan. 20, 1923
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Creating a Broader Market for the Piano
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NE thing piano men never seem to weary of is drawing analogies between their own industry and the
automobile trade. That there is a certain similarity between these two fields is indisputable, but,
unfortunately, the piano man usually regards the automobile trade, not as an industry from which
he may draw valuable merchandising information to apply to his own problems, but as a competitor
with which he constantly comes in contact.
As a matter of fact, the piano man, be he merchant or manufacturer, has nothing to fear from the
automobile industry—on the contrary, he has a lot to learn. The remarkable popularity of the latter—and its
advance has been one of the most striking industrial developments of the present day—is due largely to the
application of some of the best business brains of the country to its merchandising problems.
In its early days the automobile was usually advertised and sold as a piece of machinery; and automo-
bile advertisements, filled with technical specifications, ordinarily required the services of a technical engineer
to understand them. The salesman himself dilated almost entirely on technical points, of which he usually
knew very little. The automobile was then a complicated machine to the average person and but little more.
Some years ago, however, automobile publicity and selling methods underwent a radical change. The
industry took to selling the pleasure an owner could get from his car rather than simply the car itself. It
supported a country-wide propaganda in favor of touring, it undertook good-roads campaigns, it developed
every possible use of its product which would contribute to make it more essential in the life of those who
owned it. This, combined with advances in production technique which were the direct result of a market
created by these means, was the beginning of the automobile's present wide distribution.
The music merchants sell a product which has as great potential possibilities. A great many of them,
however, have not seemed to appreciate the fact that the indirect selling approach through music is after all
the most direct one. Lip-service has been given this in any amount, but outside of a few conspicuous examples
among the manufacturers and merchants and the work of one organization in the associations the allegiance
so often proclaimed has not been carried into practice.
Why this should be so is hard to understand. One reason may be that price has always played entirely
too important a part in the average merchant's and salesman's conception of the factors which make the sale.
Another is probably,the lack of ability to look further than the mere instrument that is being sold or than the
deal in which, for the moment, they might be engaged. Too much of a single-track mind and that clogged by
tradition in many cases, is not a real essential to the business man of foresight.
The basis of every sale of a musical instrument, no matter what type it may be, is music. Now music,
in this sense, is not a mere conglomeration of sounds. It is a definite means of giving entertainment and
pleasure, and developing cultural and educational values, of creating an opportunity for giving a better life.
Modern merchandising, no matter what field it may be, is no longer the mere passing of a product from
hand to hand. Even in so staple an article as the average food product, it is flavor that is sold more than
anything else. The automobile trade realized this fact years ago, and from that developed its present tre-
mendous industry. If it is a competitor of the piano, it is simply so because the music industries have not
followed a similar path. The automobile may have a sport side to it which takes a strong hold on the average
person's imagination, but music has the more powerful support of education, which has always been the most
powerful factor in selling the American public. In the pleasure they each give, they are not competitors but
supplement each other. They do not, in the main, compete for the same hours of a person's time.
In short, if the slogan "the lure of the open road" is more powerful with the American buying public
than "music in the home" the responsibility lies at th > music dealer's door and nowhere else.
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