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The Player Business Is Measured by
Extent of the Roll Business
Per Capita Purchases of Music Rolls, in Comparison With the Numbers of Players in American Homes, Is
Entirely Disproportionate—What Is Wrong With Music Roll Retail Merchandising?—The Fair
and* Justified Complaint Against the Average Retail Dealer in This Direction
ET us do something about the music roll.
The player business, to all intents and pur-
poses, may be measured by the roll busi-
ness. The two, indeed, from the retail view-
point, are simply two aspects of the same
shield, two facets of the same jewel. Precisely
on the day when the merchants wake up to see
that fact, the player business will be reborn
And that is no dream either.
As things stand, however, the whole matter
is no less than a stupid mess. The discussion
in this paper some weeks ago of the per caput
consumption of rolls has only been confirmed
by the figures given out when the Q R S
Music Co. absorbed the United Music Co.
Even if the output of the combined interests
were one-half again as great as it has been of-
ficially stated to be, the annual consumption of
music rolls per player-piano owner would still
be excessively small. And until that per caput
consumption has been doubled, at the least, the
player business will not be a profitable busi-
ness.
All this has nothing to do with the two manu-
facturing companies above mentioned, which
are now combined into one, or with any other
maker, of music rolls. The bulletin columns of
The Review show that music-roll manufacture
goes on, and that there is profit in it. But what
does really matter is that the dozen or so mil-
lions of music rolls turned out annually by all
of these concerns become very insignificant
when they are distributed among the thousands
of dealers who sell musical merchandise. And
when, still farther, the distribution has been
secondarily completed, among the ultimate con-
sumers, the per caput figures become positively
distressing. In other words, the manufacturers
ought to be turning out at least twenty-five
millions of music-rolls per year. If we should
say that every owner of a player-piano ought
to buy one new roll a week, we should be stat-
ing what is no more than evident, if indeed the
player-piano is to the average owner what we
know it could and should be. But if every
owner of a player-piano bought one roll a
week, the annual output would be several times
twenty-five millions per year.
The "No Demand" Argument
Now we know that the per caput consump-
tion is less, terribly less, than this. And when
we stop to ask ourselves why this should be
so, we are compelled to say, first, that the
dealers do not try to sell music-rolls; and sec-
ond, that the owners do not know how to get
from their players anything like as much in
the way of amusement and entertainment as
they would if they knew how.
Why don't the dealers try to sell music-rolls?
What is wrong with music-roll selling? The
answer is likely to be that there is not suffi-
cient public demand for music-rolls to warrant
the dealer making a serious effort to sell them.
But to that again the answer is that the dealer
can hardly expect the people to-develop de-
mand on their own account, and then to walk
in and insistently beg for music-rolls. The
merchant in the clothing line certainly does not
wait for the public to walk in, but rather in-
duces the public to enter by constant and at-
tractive advertising. And the same is true of
all similar lines of merchandise. Only in the
music business, it seems, do the merchants be-
lieve that a line of merchandise should be self-
L
selling. And only in the music business do we
find merchants complaining that an article of
necessity does not sell, that there is no de-
mand for it.
Article of Necessity!
Article of necessity? Certainly! For every
owner of a player-piano surely a collection of
music-rolls is a necessity. Perhaps not so
quantitatively as gasoline to an automobile, for
though a music-roll is as necessary as gasoline,
one music-roll may be used for the same me-
chanical purpose just so long as it holds to-
gether. Yet qualitatively it is just the same
in both cases. Moreover, if the player business
is to expand and to make itself big and im-
portant year by year in something like a fair
ratio to the increase of the population, certainly
there must be a large, a very large, increase in
the sale of music-rolls. For if the present per
caput consumption continues to be the miser-
able thing it is to-day, the player business will
steadily and rapidly decline into insignificance,
reaching that undesirable position within half
a dozen years.
The Fair Complaint
Does this sound like undue pessimism? Then
consider the facts. The fair complaint against
music merchants is that they will not treat
their business with anything like due respect.
How on earth can a business be expected to
grow while the retail men are heard say-
ing that somehow or other the public is slow
to buy, while the one obvious method of re-
taining old customers and creating new ones is
being neglected, if not actually treated with
contempt? That is a fair question, and the
negative answer which alone can be given to
it assures us that the complaint is fair also.
There has got to be a change, a very con-
siderable and deep change, a change in fact of
heart. Merchants have got to be educated all
over again on the question of music-rolls. The
present writer can remember how big depart-
ment stores found it good business to carry
music-rolls by the thousands and to maintain
departments, employing a dozen salespeople, in
the day of the old sixty-five note player with
all its imperfections. Now to-day we have the
eighty-eight-note player and roll, we have the
recorded roll, and we have the reproducing
piano as well as the eighty-eight-note pedal
player. Now why should there to-day be less in-
stead of more interest in roll buying? It simply
cannot be said with any truth that the people
are not interested in music, or in the piano. The
merchant who says that knows that his own
piano store is a standing contradiction to the
very notion. And the only satisfactory answer
is that in the music business we have hardly
any merchandisers, even if we do have a great
many merchants. There is very evidently a dif-
ference, a vast difference, between merchants
and merchandisers, between men who merel)
keep store and men who sell goods.
Well, the music merchants can sell grand
pianos, reproducing as well as straight. Why
cannot they sell music-rolls? The answer is
that they can sell them. But they have got
themselves into bad habits, into habits which
must be broken before there can be any im-
provement. The music-roll department must
come back. There must be a revival of sales-
manship in music-rolls, and a revival of dem-
onstration too. These things are not merely
necessary, they are vital. Music-roll salesman-
ship and merchandising must come back.
Henry Dreher Strong for
Blind Piano Tuner Wins
Trade Promotional Work
Success as a Dealer
A. J. Peters, Although Sightless, Found Indoor
Work Too Monotonous, So Branched Out
Into the Piano Selling Field
Cleveland Dealer in First Visit to New York
for Over a Year Tells of What His House Is
Doing to Promote Interest in the Piano
Mr. PLEASANT, MICH., November 20.—A report
Henry Dreher, president of the Dreher Piano
that the Peters Music Co., of this place, had Co., Cleveland, O., accompanied by Mrs.
opened a branch in Alma, Mich., was premature, Dreher, was a visitor to New York this week
having arisen from sales of pianos and players for the first time since his illness, which con-
made in and around Alma by the Peters Music fined him to his home for some months. Mr.
Co.
Dreher is fast regaining his health and seems
The success of A. J. Peters, the proprietor of much of his old self when visiting the various
the Peters Music Co., is at once interesting and manufacturers whose products his company
' inspirational. He became totally blind twenty- represents in Cleveland, among them Steinway
seven years ago and entered the Michigan & Sons and the Aeolian Co.
School for the Blind to learn piano tuning.
Mr. Dreher is particularly interested in the
Then he became a tuner in a piano factory and promotional work being carried on and planned
successfully held it for three years, but the in the interests of the piano. In addition to
monotony of the work and his native energy subscribing generously to the support of the
and courage inspired him to change. He then work, the Dreher Piano Co. has caused to be
represented the Cable Company as a salesman painted on a number of barns in the vicinity
for thirteen years in central Michigan, work- of Cleveland large signs bearing the slogan
ing from their Saginaw store.
"Make Your Home Musical — Buy a Piano."
On August 1 he decided to go into business No name is placed on the sign, it being felt
for himself and secured the agency for the Chase that whatever buying interest is developed
Bros, piano in his section. He received the through means of the signs will turn in part
first one on August 15 and since that time has to the Dreher store.
sold thirteen Chase Bros, players and three up-
Other Aeolian Hall visitors during the week
rights to his local public. He has done a good included W. H. Daniels, of Denton, Cottier &
deal of service work in addition and has excel- Daniels, Buffalo, N. Y., with Mrs. Daniels, and
lent prospects for a steadily increasing profit- John Huber, general manager of the company,
able trade.
and Alexander Steinert, of M. Steinert & Sons.