Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
NOVEMBER 21, 1925
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
Player Must Once More Be Sold on
Its Musical Capabilities
A Return to Fundamentals in Merchandising This Instrument Will Once More Place the Future in the
Hands of the Industry Just as Happened Twenty Years Ago When the Instrument Was a Novelty
— It Is Still a Novelty So Far as Its Real Capabilities Are Concerned
L
ET'S get once for all into our minds the
basic idea that we have to sel] the pneu-
matic action once more (and this time
forever) upon its musical abilities.
Tlie talking machine people are giving us a
lead. What they have been doing during re-
cent months and what they arc planning to do
during months to come oiler us player men
some very instructive suggestions, which we
may well apply to our own case. As every-
body knows, there came a sudden and unlooked
for slump in the talking machine business about
two years ago. To a considerable extent, this
slump was brought about by the development
of radio apparatus into practical shape, and
with the parallel development of facilities for
its use. When the man in the street learned
that he could string together a few wires, a bit
of what looked like coal and a needle, clap on
a pair of head-phones and hear sounds from
the other end of Beyond, he naturally went
rapidly insane on the subject, and spent his
time (millions of him did it) figuring out how
to spend all the money he could spare upon
radio apparatus, and all the time he could spare
sitting up trying to get distant stations to come
in. It was all very exciting while it lasted and
until it began to simmer down to the point
where radio had to stand on its own merits and
to accept a position in the world of entertain-
ment more in accord therewith. As things arc,
of course, radio has come down to the point of
acceptance and development as a great public
utility, which in due course will doubtless be as
common and as much taken for granted as is
the telephone.
What Did They Do?
Unfortunately for the phonograph, however,
radio came at a time when business was more
or less disturbed anyhow, and the first reactions
of the public to it damaged the disk and the
sound-box still more • in general estimation.
The new thing was mysterious and wonderful;
the old thing was well known and for some
years had produced nothing thrilling.
What did the phonograph people do? They
began seriously to think, and they saw that
here was a formidable competition which could
not be laughed away. They did not, however,
fall into fright, but when the first excitement
was over, and there was opportunity to look at
facts sanely and quietly, they perceived that the
two systems, radio and phonograph, must grow
together. Radio, they saw, is simply a mar-
velous extension of the human ear. The talk-
ing machine, on the other hand, is the preserv-
er of musical performance. One is evanescent,
the other permanent. On the other hand, it
was clear that radio had given to millions new
ideas of music, especially of concerted music,
and that the talking machine simply must meas-
ure up in future to the standard set by radio
as to the quantity of sound delivered, and as to
the variety of music. Once this great truth had
been grasped, the talking machine people set to
work to produce that which would put their
product on a level with radio in these points,
knowing that any radical improvement made
would once more set them in a place of se-
curity, since the talking machine's power of
preservation and of reproduction at any time
and at all times puts it in a place of its own,
from which it can only be ousted by something
of its own kind, but enormously better.
And they have produced the something. They
have produced now two types of talking ma-
chine, one electrical and one mechanical, each
enormously superior to the old machines. They
have further announced a program of develop-
ment which evidently is going to bring forth
records of a quality and type hitherto not with-
in the purview of the manufacturers concerned.
It is evident that we are to have a campaign of
music, of selling the American people not per-
sonalities, not the name of this or that singer,
but music itself, the finest performances of the
finest music by the finest artists; and not snip-
pets of music, not bits of this and of that, but
fully recorded pieces, done under the best con-
ditions, and representing, as must always be the
case with talking machine records, a much high-
er level of result than can be expected from the
casual performance casually caught by "listen-
ing-in."
A Policy of Courage
It is meanwhile certain that this new policy
will demand a concentration of effort and a
whole-hearted conviction of its rightness, such
as has not yet been expended in any other
branch of music merchandising. Yet the fact
that this policy has become crystallized and that,
so far as can be judged, those who have inau-
gurated it are thoroughly committed to carry-
ing it out, simply furnishes the highest possible
presumption of its soundness. It must be right,
one might say, or those who have so much at
stake would not so radically change their older
views in order to take it up.
And surely the lesson for the player industry
is plain enough. If there is one thing in our
present conditions more certain than another, it
is that we have been getting soft, flabbily soft,
in our dealings with the buying public. We
began in the first days by talking personal per-
formance of music and we gave recitals and
trained our salesmen to demonstrate and con-
ducted our campaigns right on that principle.
And we put the player on the map. One says
"we," meaning, doubtless, the whole trade; but
in fact it was just the pioneer houses which did
all this. They did it all, while the mass of the
manufacturers and merchants looked on sneer-
ing and wondering how soon the fad would die
-out and go flat. Isn't that true?
Well, it did not go flat. The player was put
on the mercantile map by these methods, and it
might as well be remembered that in those
early days it was a pretty terrible thing to play,
and about as crude as it could well be. But it
was put on the map. It did win out. It did
create a demand for itself. In spite of its sim-
ply terrible crudeness and clumsiness it re-
sponded to a real need in human nature; and it
won out.
Why Did It?
It won out simply because it was demon-
strated. The salesmen were trained to show the
customer that he or she could learn in a few
minutes the rudiments of a very wonderful
game, the game of music making. Lots of peo-
ple bought on the strength of the demonstration
who never learned to play half so well as the
demonstrator; but the fact remains that until
the whole thing was deliberately cheapened in
an effort to get it down to a more popular level
the average owner did his or her best to play
well, and got from the exertion an exquisite
sort of pleasure of just precisely the same kind
as the pleasure one gets from playing golf, mah
jongg and bridge, from dancing or from manip-
ulating the dials of a radio set with cunning and
skill.
Twenty Years Ago
Twenty years ago the player business had its
future in its own hands. The piano men could
have done with it anything they might have
wished. Actually they threw away the sound
policy of selling its musical performance, on the
ground that this was too "high-brow" and that
the people "did not want to be educated." They
threw away all that experience had taught them
as to correct merchandising policy; and they
went out after prices, terms, throw-ins and bar-
gains, letting the player-piano go into the hands
of persons not even instructed in the handling
of the levers and buttons, not even knowing
that foot-work can be varied to vary tone and
volume.
The result everyone knows. Will the trade
persist in a policy which, at the very least, has
not brought it prosperity and will they persist
in it in face of the fact that the reproducing
piano people are basing and have always based
their whole policy upon nothing but music,
upon what the instrument will do?
Shall W e Not Be Wise?
Will those supply houses and those instru-
ment manufacturers who are committed to the
pneumatic action and the player-piano stand by
;md permit the whole structure they have built
up to fall into ruins? It cannot be believed.
We have to sell the pneumatic action and
the player-piano which contains it all over
again. We can only do it by going back and
taking our old original line of policy, that is to
say, by teaching the people to play. That way
prosperity lies. The player-piano is essential
to the music industries. It ought not to be
allowed to languish just on account of stupid-
ity and apathy. Does not experience count for
anything?
Interesting Program for
New York Merchants' Meet
Several Worth-while Addresses Scheduled for
Meeting of New York Piano Merchants' Asso-
ciation on. December 1
The date for the second Fall session of the
New York Piano Merchants' Association has
been set for Tuesday evening, December 1, to
be held in the banquet rooms of the National
Republican Club, 54 West Fortieth street, at
6.30 p. m., according to John J. Glynn, associa-
tion president. William Walker Orr, secretary
and treasurer of the New York Credit Men's
Association and assistant treasurer of the Na-
tional Association of Credit Men, has accepted
an invitation to speak on credit risks, and will
deliver a prepared talk.
Other talks will be given by association mem-
bers and will include the following: E. Paul
Hamilton, "Better Salesmen"; L. Schoenewald,
"Better Salesmen" from a different angle;
Harold Bersin, "The Commission Evil," and
Mr. Glynn will mention some striking local ex-
amples of bait advertising for the purpose of
stimulating the interest of the association in
eliminating this sort of misrepresentation. An
interesting meeting and large attendance are
anticipated by Mr. Glynn and other members of
the executive committee in view of the splendid
turnout of members at the October meeting.