PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
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C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
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partments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago, Illinois,
under.Act of March 3, 1879.
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ness notices will be Indicated by the word "advertisement" In accordance with the
Act of August 24, 1912.
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have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical in-
strument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and "West-
ern hemispheres.
Presto Buyers' Guide is the only reliable index to the American Pianos and
Player-Pianos, it analyzes all instruments, classifies them, gives accurate estimates
of their value and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Items of news and other matter of general interest to the music trades are In-
vited and when accepted will be paid for. All communications should be addressed to
Presto Publishing Co., 407 So. Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO SEND IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
PLAYER ROLLS AND TRUSTS
To members of the trade there may at first seem something
almost comical in the legal statement of just what a player music
roll really is. The technical definition of Special Prosecutor Guyler,
in his complaint against the "music trust," leaves no doubt about the
roll consisting of "wood or other hard substance" which, in itself,
may strike some piano men strangely. For, correct as it is, the
impression given by the term "player roll" to the piano man, com-
prehends the perforated music also—the sheet of strongly fibered
paper punctured neatly and uniformly, clear and compact. And the
fact that a new law suit, involving the music roll, has been instituted
by the Government brings up again the earlier cause at law, one
result of which was the designation of player rolls and phonograph
records as "canned music."
The principal points in the complaint against the publishers is
printed on another page, supplementing last week's first account in
this paper. And, if the counts are in exact accord with conditions,
as the music publishers wish to enforce them, it is a good thing for
the trade that an effort is made to dissolve the alleged trust. And it
is just as good a thing for the publishers themselves as for the player
industries and the public. For, while it might be possible to hold
up the player roll manufacturers for a time, the end would be that
every maker of rolls would be his own publisher. Popular music is
a matter of very brief vitality. No "song hit" lives beyond from six
months to a year. How many of the "hits" of even five years ago
can you remember today? How many of the "hits" of even two
years ago?
In all the music trade today it is probable that not a dozen indi-
viduals could hum "Sweet Violets," which was the vogue twenty-five
years ago. And since then how many more popular songs have come
and gone. Can you recall even their names? What great differ-
ence would it make, then, were the player roll makers to employ their
own staff of composers, buy up the promising Mss., and deny the
publication of their copyrights in sheet music form?
How long would the sheet music publishers last? With the
August 14, 1920.
player piano as the medium of introduction and popularizing—as it is
now, to a great extent—what would the Hit Alley publishers do with
their outpourings? It must seem that the player roll industries have
all the best of it in the event of any necessity of "trust busting" in
the sheet music trade. There could be no "conspiracy" or combina-
tion of sheet music publishers that could carry its power far into the
future. The better part of wisdom, on the publishers' part, is to
encourage the player roll makers to create popularity for their prints.
For the time has come when pianos played by hand are being
scrapped, and the kind that consume the "canned music" stuff are in
the ascendancy.
As is well understood everywhere, outside la wcourts, it is now
customary for composers of popular melody to employ the reproduc-
ing piano for their Pegasus device. The pneumatics have supplanted
the wings, and the divine afflatus finds mode of flight in the pedals.
The most successful of contemporaneous song writers is, without
doubt, Mr. Lee Roberts, who would perhaps never have written music
at all but for the player-piano. And Mr. Roberts has a habit of doing
his composing at the player-piano, the entire composition having its
first recording by the marvelous accuracy and mechanical ease of the
automatic reproducing device. Will all musical composition eventu-
ally be done in the same way? Or will the "Song Wanted" adver-
tisers and publishers, who "set your songs to music and insure a
publisher," continue to do business at the old stand, with the aid of
the "trust"?
There can be no doubt about the annoyance of the "trust," as set
forth by the Federal prosecutor, so far as concerns the player roll
industries that find it essential to include the Hit Alley "hits" in
their offerings. If the arbitrary methods set forth are really enforced,
so much the worse for the members of the trust. They will in, them-
selves perfect the best kind of a trust buster and before the prose-
cuting attorney can get off his speech to the court, every player roll
industry may be putting forth most of the music that sells and all of
it that is worth selling.
And the sheet music trade will continue to decline until the dis-
tinction between music and jazz becomes clearer to the people. And
then the music written for the performance of human fingers, on
"straight" pianos, will be exclusively fine and artistically exclusive,
while the player rolls will enable the great majority of music lovers
without skill or genius to repeat all music, and especially the popular
kinds, on the player piano.
FREIGHTS AND PRICES
A big daily newspaper warns retail merchants that any attempt
to make excessive profits because of the increased freights may end
in disaster. The newspaper says:
111 gotten profits are not sacred. The public protects them only in so far
as it feels itself protected. Consumers are not forced to buy beyond a lim-
ited line of necessities. They have proved that fact by the decreased demand
of the last few months. If business men have not been sufficiently convinced
of the power of this public reaction they will be convinced when they try
to heap up profits on the new freight tariffs by high prices without high val-
ues. The right to raise is on their side to a very limited extent only. If they
are wise they will keep well within that limit.
That is the meat of the anti-profiteering argument and precau-
tion. It seems almost anomalous that pianos are not so much affected
by the price readjustments and changes as the more commonplace
articles. It is, of course, because there is no standard of piano val-
ues. The prices have from the first been fixed by the individual manu-
facturers, and based upon his own ideas of what his product was
worth, together with their relation of the unit to the total factory
output. Naturally, all ambitious manufacturers have considered their
own pianos just a little better than the best of the rest of them. And
if the prices were lower than some other pianos just as good, it was
because of some special economy in its production, or because he felt
satisfied with a smaller margin of profit. There was no system for
finding the exact costs, anyway, and if the profit, based upon a rough
estimate, seemed ample, nothing more was deemed necessary.
And so, too, with the retailer. If the selling price was about
as high as their "prospect" would stand, well and good. It didn't mat-
ter that some other neighbor had bought the identical instrument
in make and style for from $50 to $200 less. The last sale was al-
ways "confidential" as to price, and so it went. The selling price at
retail is not even yet affected by such things as added freight costs.
There are a few exceptions, due not to the riotous principles of the
retailers, but to the correct business principles of the manufacturers,
who try to fix a fair retail price and advertise that price in such a
way that the public will not pay more.
When the freight increase sets in, the piano dealers must, of
course, pay just that much more for the instruments "laid down" in
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