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How the Trade Is Reaping the Fruit
of 25 Years of False Talk
Only the Innate Selling Vitality of the Player-piano Has Made It Able to Withstand the Injury Done It by
the Constant Claim That "Anyone Can Play the Player"—An Honest Effort to Teach People
to Play It Properly Will Set Its Merchandising on New and Better Basis
N a recent article some attention was paid
to the important question of the position to
be occupied by the reproducing piano and
the player-piano in the new alignment of the
industry caused by the adoption of the scheme
for national piano promotion. It is evident that
if any good is really to result from all this plan-
ning, each aspect of the situation must be
thoroughly canvassed and as thoroughly treated,
for there are many aspects to the problem
which is before us and it is hard to say that any
one of them is more important than any other.
Of course the piano is the basic musical in-
strument, and being so, that which first takes
our notice is what may be called its manual as-
pect. It is evident from the start that the
proper way to promote piano sales is to pro-
mote piano playing among the children and
adults of the land. But with all this granted, one
simply cannot wish away the player-piano or the
reproducing piano. Here they are, strongly in-
trenched and with a record of such usefulness
to the industry as to entitle them almost to first
place in strength and selling value. These in-
struments cannot be treated as if a campaign
could go along without them. In a word, they
must be considered, and considered with very
great, and even meticulous, care. For if they
are neglected it is quite probable that they will
succeed in wrecking the whole scheme of propa-
ganda, not through inborn malice on their in-
animate part or on the deliberate part of their
makers and sellers, but because of their own
natural strength, influence and hold upon pub-
lic affection. To ignore them would simply be,
in a word, to invite disaster.
The Pedal Player Especially
For the present moment let us consider the
single case of the player-piano properly so-
called, that is, the instrument which consists of
a piano, grand or upright, fitted with a
mechanism which plays the piano when oper-
ated and controlled by human brain and body.
Let us for the moment put aside altogether
the reproducing piano, which indeed deserves
separate treatment, and consider this one large
and extremely interesting factor in our problem.
What is to be its position? Where does it come
in with respect to a campaign for promotion of
piano sales conducted on a national scale?
Ever since the player-piano came on to the
market more than twenty-five years ago it has
been a sort of step-child in respect of its treat-
ment by those who should have nourished and
cherished it. Its own enormous power has en-
abled it to strike pretty deeply, despite neglect
and stupidity, but it has never become what its
first promoters were justified in believing il
would speedily come to be. It has, in fact,
been never sold at all, in the strict sense of
the word. To this day millions, literally
millions of excellent men and women who have
some liking for music and probably some de-
sire (it is a normal desire) to express them-
selves therein, have not the least idea that the
player-piano is what they really want, have not
the remotest notion of what can be done with
it, by one who learns to play it. The brilliant
advertising which the Gulbransen Co. has been
doing for so long has always to fight against
this ignorance, which is so deep-seated that
only the strongest language repeated a score of
thousand times can ever be expected to modify
it. And how has all this come about? Simply
enough. It is the fruit of a quarter century of
I
the talk about no skill being needed and about
a child playing as well as an adult. Plainly, so
long as this is the prevailing belief among mil-
lions, the player-piano will positively not par-
ticipate in any benefit from a campaign based
upon music. A promotion campaign calculated
to benefit sale of player-pianos, when such sales
are made on the principle of misrepresentation,
will have to be based upon something quite
far away from music.
Up to Retailers
In other words, it is entirely a matter to be
decided by the merchants and their salesmen,
whether the sales of player-pianos shall be in-
creased through the operation of the forthcom-
ing national campaign of piano promotion. As
a matter of fact, if the salesmen and the mer-
chants would, from this time onward, make up
their minds to begin selling player-pianos upon
the principle of telling the truth about them
and learning how to play them well and demon-
strate that playing to their prospects, nothing
more would be needed to create an imme-
diate upturn in the sales account. For, as was
said before, the player-piano has never yet been
sold, rightly speaking. To the vast majority of
those who ought to possess and play player-
pianos, these instruments are to all intents and
purposes quite unknown. It is still virgin terri-
tory, this of the player-piano market. That is
to say, the proper territory, the territory which
should have been combed over from the first, is
still almost untouched. The intelligent people
have been utterly neglected where they have
not been frightened away, and why? Simply
because merchants have clung to the absurd
belief that the way to sell a musical instrument
is to make it as unmusical as possible, to per-
mit it to give out sounds which would disgrace
a street piano, and then to say that this is "giv-
ing the people what they want." That is why
the only natural and proper market for the
player-piano has been to this day left untilled.
And that too is why the player-piano impera-
tively is needing, from now on, a revival of mer-
chandising common sense to the end that it
may partake, equally with the piano proper and
the reproducing piano, of that revival of public
interest in piano music which must be the cer-
tain result of the planned national campaign.
To put it in yet another way, the position of
the player-piano in respect of the present situa-
tion is this: It is a musical instrument. It
should, can, and in fact must, henceforth be sold
as a musical instrument, to be learned, played
and enjoyed. Any honest effort to teach people to
play it well will set the whole merchandising
situation on a new and firm basis. Whereafter
the benefits which will accrue to the straight
piano from the planned campaign of promotion,
will equally tend to the use and hehoof of the
player-piano likewise.
A State of Flux
The whole situation is in a state of change.
The position of the player-piano was never so
favorable as it is to-day. Simply the question
is whether the retail trade will take advantage
of the fact and reap the reward.
Hanley Piano Co, Moves to New Store
Giving It Four Times Present Space
Demand in the Twin Cities Fair for Season of the Year With Main Emphasis on High Grade
Instruments—Some Dealers Report July a Splendid Month
OT. PAUL and MINNEAPOLIS, July 24.
^ —Business and the weather may be char-
acterized respectively as "fair and warmer" al-
though that is being a little faint in describing
trade conditions. While merchants, for the
most part, report that things are a little quiet,
there are others who tell of an unlooked-for
acceleration in certain lines.
P. J. Hanley is among the latter and has
quite a few bits of interesting news. First,
July so far is a splendid month and the higher
priced pianos, chiefly the Bauer, have been
moving more than well. Mr. Hanley adds that
the lower priced goods are not moving as fast
but there are no complaints with $1,000 units
of sale on the books. The Hanley Piano Co.
moved on July 22 into its new store a few
doors from the present headquarters. It is at
45 South Eighth street, in the Pomeroy Build-
ing, and the space there is about four times
the present area.
E. R. Dyer, president of the Metropolitan
Music Co., is on a vacation at Pine Camp
above Park Rapids in the Northern Minne-
sota woods. He will be gone, it is stated, un-
til August 1.
July has been a fair month is the report from
the Metropolitan Co.., with all departments
steady.
More than half the 1 Foster & Waldo force
are on vacations. R. O. Foster says that the
phonograph business is wonderful with Pana-
tropes especially going strong. The books
show this department away ahead of the volume
of last year.
Although July is somewhat quieter than
June, the Cammack Co. is very well satis-
fied. Portables are enjoying the seasonable
boom and records maintain a steady average
of sales.
Among the many Minnesota music vaca-
tioners is M. L. McGinnis, of the firm of that
name. He is at Welawiben, near Kimberly,
Minn.
Wurlitzer Plant Reopens
The large plant of the Wurlitzer Grand Piano
Co., DeKalb, 111., reopened on Monday after
the usual two weeks' shut-down, during which
time the staff took their annual vacations. The
plant is now running full force on full time and
orders for grand pianos are pronounced as satis-
factory. The Wurlitzer models now represent
eighteen periods and these types are becoming
particularly popular with the trade and the
public.
The William
street, Laconia,
cently by John
St. Clair Music
H. Avery Music Store, Main
N. H., has been purchased re-
E. St. Clair, proprietor of the
Store.