Play Meter

on 60/ 40. PLAY METER: Are you getting any kind of service charge or front money? LITTLE: No. PLAY METER: Are you planning to? LITTLE: rd like to but I think it's draining the business, the competition of the business. There's always someone running around trying to outoperate you. PLAY METER: So you're trying to make it just on the cash box, right? LITTLE: I hear about these people that get it on. I'm not the breed of cat that can do it. I've tried. I find that is the theme, but that's to cover up the higher prices the manufacturers have created. The operator is supposed to go out and give them 25 per cent. I have not been successful with that myself. That doesn't say it can't be done and there are a few people that can do it, but I haven't the nature to get it on. I may have it on a location for three months then I find I'm bumped by another operator for that reason. I find that the location offers a location, the spot to do business in and it seems to be that I can't get it. The split we demand on jukeboxes isn't too great for this area. PLAY METER: Do you think there's going to be a big future for the jukebox market? LITTLE: I believe there's going to be a radical change in the next two or three years; again we're back to the microprocessor: I think they'll be putting mu~ic into a microprocessor and eliminating the records. That's my opinion. PLAY METER: Is that possible? LITTLE: Yes, it is possible. PLAY METER: What about quality? LITTLE: I see no problem. Naturally I'm not that qualified technically to make a statement, but I see it revolutionizing the jukebox industry in the next two or three years. PLAY METER: You mean to say you could go to a microprocessor and put a new record on it? LITTLE: No, it could be programmed. You could put a microprocessor in and program it to 200 selections or whatever. PLAY METER: How would you update it? LITTLE: By changing the microprocessor. PLAY METER: That could be costly for these guys that change records every week. LITTLE: There aren't many records coming out. I change 20 selections or 10 records a month. But I never say ten records, I always say 20 selections, 20 new releases. We're standardized in programming; we treat it as a business. We allow certain degrees of flexibility but not much. We're not that personal when it comes down to it. I can't get down to bringing Flossy her favorite record. I take the personal touch out of it, to be truthful with you. All my programs are printed. We reprint all our programs once a month. PLAY METER: You're talking about title strips? LITTLE: Yes. Not typed-printed. All standard, Cl: too. I originated that 30 or 40 years ago when I ~went from nickel to ten cent music in the thirties. ~This was when Seeburg was spending thousands in •the pages of Cash Box trying to keep the jukebox at ~a nickel. I was already at ten cents, maybe the first 50 one in the continental United States, Canada and Mexico to go to ten cent music. PLAY METER: What's your music on now? LITTLE: Music is on two for a quarter, in some isolated spots one for a quarter. PLAY METER: Do you have quad? LITTLE: All quad. We put the word QUAD on every jukebox we get. PLAY METER: Whether it's really quad or not? LITTLE: Right. And we have another one called "Tetraquadraphonic." PLAY METER: You made that up? LITTLE: Yes. People accept the word quad and really do not know what it is-there are no quad records on the market. Still everything we handle is quad, in some cases, as I said, tetraquadraphonic, which means nothing, but they accept it. PLAY METER: That's merchandising for you. LITTLE: We put speakers in; we install in every place a total overuse of auxiliary speakers to get complete saturation in the place so there are no hot spots or cold spots. We do that automatically, and we put the word QUAD, the letters Q-U-A-D on every speaker so the man thinks he's wired for sound quadraphonically. It is 100 per cent accepted. They do not know what quad means. You have to have perfect conditions, sit quietly exactly in the middle of a room just to hear quad. With stereo it was eyeball action; with quadraphonic it's just total saturation. And the idea is to make a quad sound without quad records. How ridiculous can you get? But it does sell, the word sells anyway. PLAY METER: What other little marketing techniques do you use in your music route? LITTLE: Basically it's education of the location owner to allow us that we know our music business-we don't know their business but we do know ours. As I said before, we don't get into the time consuming personal touch of providing records that each individual at the location likes. We put on a standard selection of music that is popular. We know there are only so many records coming out each month and we fulfill the need those create. Time and money are related and we find it's a waste of time keeping a library on hand. We do not treat programming that way at all. We treat it as a business. Every now and then we get an irate customer that doesn't like the selections we have, then we do bend but we usually wear them out before they wear us out. It's the opposite to the thinking of most operators, to be honest with you. I've found that you can't win them all. You're not going to get them all, and you're going to lose the odd account over that. But I'd rather lose that account than get it into a very small personal touch that really doesn't show up in the end, in the overall yearly take of a jukebox. That's my own opinion. It's opposite to what the industry will say, but I've been there. As far as the records are concerned, I think I'm musically in tune. We allow the supplier to select the top records and he has every top record in the business going back to the oldies. But it's a young people's world. They are the bulk of the jukebox players.