Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
EDWARD LYiVlAN
Editor and Proprietor
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
3 East 14th St., New York
SUBSCRIPTION (including: postage), United States,
Mexico and Canada, $a.oo per year; all other countries,
$300.
ADVERTISEHENTS, $2.00 per inch.sinpfle column, per
insertion. On quarterly or yearly contracts a special dis-
count is allowed. Advertising Pages $50.00, opposite read-
ing matter $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other than currency form, should
be made payable to Edward Lyman Bill.
Entered at the New York Post Office as Second Oast Matter.
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 17, 1898.
TELEPHONE NUMBER, 1745--EIOHTEENTH STREET.
THE KEYNOTE.
The first week of each month, The Review will
contain a supplement embodying the literary
and musical features which have heretofore
appeared in The Keynote. This amalgamation
will be effected without in any way trespassing
on our regular news service. The Review will
continue to remain, as before, essentially a
trade paper.
CLEARING
THE TRADE ATMOS-
PHERE.
*' V O U have said a great many things in
• The Review which have interested
me of late, but none more than the matter
of commissions to music teachers," re-
marked a well-known member of the trade
this week, while we were engaged in friend-
ly chat.
"There, is no doubt in my mind," he
continued, "that vast sums have been paid
for services which have never been ren-
dered."
This is the piece de resistance of the whole
matter, for vast sums have been paid for
services which have never been rendered.
No manufacturer will refuse to pay—and
liberally for that matter, for services ren-
dered which have proved advantageous in
a business way, but what manufacturers
object to most strenuously to-day is paying
something for an alleged service, proof of
the existence of which never materializes—
at least to any appreciable extent.
There are good and bad rmtsic teachers
like good and bad music trade editors.
Unquestionably in the former case as in the
latter, the good may suffer for the crimes
of the bad, but it is necessary now to use
intelligent discrimination in opening up
dealings with either. Manufacturers have
certainly cast aside the old forms as ap-
plied to the music trade editor, and they
never again will bow their heads in sub-
jection to the impecunious demands of the
man who has stormed and threatened, ex-
torted and bled this trade for years. The
scales have fallen from the manufacturer's
eyes and his very back bone has become
stiffened by reason of the fact that the bet-
ter papers have grown stronger and to-day
form an impelling power which he is forced
to recognize as an advantage to his busi-
ness, while the blackmailer, like poor
Spain, has become impotent and harmless.
Manufacturers must oftentimes wonder
to-day how they submitted to the con-
ditions of years ago.
While the demand for commissions, fa-
vors, loans, etc., etc., from music teachers
and others, upon manufacturers has been
large and massive, full grown and well
rounded, yet there has never been as a
whole, that real benefit which they claimed
for their efforts. It is by acceding to the
many demands made upon them that man-
ufacturers and dealers have assisted to-
wards creating the idea that there are ab-
normal profits in the piano business.
The idea of one friend bringing in an-
other and getting a large fat commission,
simply for recommending a certain instru-
ment, is ridiculous from a mercantile view.
It is a false position and has injured the
industry rather than benefited it. If one
recommends a particular tailor he does not
go around and demand a percentage for
recommending the man, neither does he in
any other line except in the piano busi-
ness. And this is one of the abuses which
has crept into this trade and has lowered
it materially and taken from its dignity as
well.
Some men to-day pay as high as thirty
per cent, commission on sales. And there
are various kinds of commissions—omis-
sions too. In other words, we know of in-
stances where a dealer has been asked to
pay no less than four commissions on a
single instrument.
Now what state of affairs is this?
It is worse than Baxter street methods.
Again, there are thousands of cases in
the country where musicians have been
furnished the best kind of instruments;
have had them kept in tune year in and
year out at the manufacturer's expense;
all for what? For a certain alleged influ-
ence which the teacher is supposed to turn
in favor of a certain make of piano.
Now, is it not a fact that in many of
these cases where the manufacturers are
being subjected to enormous expenses in
keeping up certain lines of instruments,
that they themselves arc being made vic-
tims by these same teachers, for instead of
turning their influence in the direction
where the permanent favors are being re-
ceived, they were taking around customers
to warerooms where cheaper makes of in-
struments are offered, impelled by the
motive that the cheaper man pays the
largest commission. In other words, the
cheap piano pays a bigger percentage of
profit to the dealer than the high grade
piano, hence the teacher gets a larger com-
mission from the vendor of the cheap than
of the high priced piano.
In this way they have been playing piano
manufacturers false and the latter are begin-
ning to learn it, because to-day there are
less pianos of reputable makes in the stu-
dios of music teachers throughout the land
than ever before, that are unpaid for.
In other words, manufacturers have
been drawing in instruments from certain
studios where they have placed them
at the disposal of teachers for months
and years at no charge, save that
vague and mysterious something which
possibly comes from "influence." Manu-
facturers and dealers do not object to pay-
ing liberally for what they get, but they
do object to pay for a vague something
which is not apparent to the unclothed
eye.
The piano business is resolving itself to
a twentieth century basis.
It is ridding itself of certain excres-
cences. The atmosphere is becoming
clearer.
NO STIRRING SONG.
TN no department of the music trade
affairs of America, has there been
more activity during the Hispano-Ameri-
can war than in the ranks of the music
publishers and composers. A great effort
has been made to put new music upon the
market, but even the soldiers would not
take to it, and the people would not sing
it. It is said that publishers sent " t i p s "
to camp and field to instil their latest pro-
ductions into the hearts of the soldier boys,
but, somehow, it would not work. They
had no heart for new songs.
It may seem singular that out of this
war has not been born a new song which
should give fair vent to the expression of
the people at this time, but it is so.
Of the hundreds and hundreds of songs
from writers not unknown to fame, and
others who hope to chisel their name in the
column high up, there is not a popular
song, or even one that one cares to hear
again.
Is it a fact that the situation has been
such as not to inspire the poet or even the
amateur song writer?
Current Literature says: " The present
unpleasantness with Spain has been
singular in many ways; in none more than
in its dearth of new music. Now that the
South has come clear back to the fold, that
ideal jig, 'Dixie,'has gained a national
acceptance almost above ' The Star-
Spangled Banner.' But these two pieces
have had the monopoly of public interest.