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The Music Trade Review
REVIEW
Out July 14
Monthly
Magazine Issue
of
THE
JULY 7, 1928
(Registered in the U. S. Patent Office)
Published Every Saturday by
Federated Business Publications, Inc.
•t 420 Lexington Avenue, New York
President, Raymond Bill; Vice-Presidents, J. B. Spillane, Randolph Brown; Secre-
tary and Treasurer, Edward Lyman Bill; Assistant Secretary, L. B. McDonald;
Assistant Treasurer, Win. A. Low.
B. BRITTAIN WILSON, Editor
CARLETON CHACE, Business Manager
W. H. MCCLEARY, Managing Editor
RAY BILL, Associate Editor
F. L. AVERY, Circulation Manager
E. B. MUNCH, Eastern Representative
WESTERN DIVISION:
FRANK W. KIRK, Manager
E. J. NKALV
BOSTON OFFICE:
JOHN H. WILSON, 324 Washington St.
Republic Bldg., 333 No. Michigan Ave.,
Chicago
Telephone: State 1266
Telephone: Lexington 1760-71
Does Group Instruction
Make Piano Sales?
The story of a Pacific Coast Music House and the
results in actual sales which this method of selling
has achieved.
More Salesmen Needed to
Sell Musical Instruments
In comparison with the automobile and the furni-
ture trades, retail music stores are understaffed
and have too great a labor cost.
How Grunewald's Wins the
Music Teacher
A story of co-operation between this well-known
New Orleans house and the local music teachers
that is successful.
Piano Class Teaching
in the Erie Schools
The teacher in charge of this work in Erie, Pa,,
tells how the dealer can co-operate with the
teacher to extend this work.
Brin£in& the Mandolin Back
in Portland
Re-creating the popularity of this instrument by
a little judicious sales work on the part of the
dealer.
Hi£h School Bands and
the Dealers
Joliet, 111., is the national center of high school
band music. A Joliet dealer tells of his experi-
ences with it.
IN ADDITION
Merchandising Articles on the Talking Machine, the
Radio Receiver, as well as the Monthly Technical
Department.
Out July 14
Vol. 87
A
Telephone: Main 6950
Cable: Elbill New York
July 7, 1928
No. 1
The Store of Home Entertainment
GENERAL survey of the retail music field now being
conducted by The Review shows that 98 per cent of
retail music stores carry additional lines of merchan-
dise besides pianos and talking machines. A surprisingly large
number have already entered the home moving picture field, being
convinced that this new development in home entertainment
logically falls within the scope of their own particular field.
Some, however, have ventured even further afield, carrying cer-
tain types of electrical goods and sewing machines.
As Philip T. Clay, the head of Sherman, Clay & Co., pointed
out before the National Association, of Music Merchants at its
recent convention in New York, the music store to be successful
at the present time must be essentially a merchandising center of
home entertainment. It is perhaps a difficult matter to draw a
strict line of demarkation between the lines a music store should
or should not logically carry, but The Review believes that it has
quite sufficient to attend to the entertainment and music require-
ments of a community without entering the realms of the iceless
refrigerator, the sewing machine or the vacuum cleaner.
There is an interdependence between all musical instruments,
both interpretative and reproducing, that is sufficient to prevent
them from being absolute competitors one of the other. In the
average home of ordinary means at the present time, the piano,
the talking machine and the radio are all frequently found, to
say nothing of members of the family who play other of the smaller
instruments. It is here that the general music store has the ad-
vantage of creating and catering to the repeat customer, the one
who buys more than once, so that the vital element of good will
in merchandising comes into full play and brings in its proper
dividends.
The growth in the fundamental idea of the general music
store during the past ten years has been steady and direct with
the result that today it is recognized as the most successful
method of retail musical instrument merchandising. The prob-
lems that remain are largely those of internal organization, due
to the fact that in many cases the general music store, like Topsy,
"just grew," department after department being added hap-
hazardly. That condition, however, is rapidly disappearing.
The general music store, as opposed to the store dealing in
one or at the most two lines of musical instruments, is the pre-
dominant element in the retail music trade at the present time, and
forecasts the rapid advent of the store of general home entertain-
ment. It is a move that is one in the proper direction.