Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Many Problems Existing in the Player Industry Discussed by a Manu-
facturer, a Music Roll Maker and a Dealer, Who Agree That Co-operation,
Standardization, and a Campaign of Public Education May Prove Solution
At the February meeting of the executive
committee of the National Piano Manufacturers'
Association a committee of three members was
appointed to study the general situation of the
player in its relation to the public and to other
industries with a view to formulating some defi-
nite plan for bringing its merits more positively
before the people of the nation. It is reported
by a news item in The Review of May 6 that
Messrs. Richard W. Lawrence, J. A. Coffin and B.
H. Janssen are hard at work studying their
problem but will make no announcements until
they have produced some definite scheme.
We cannot properly ask these gentlemen to
tell us what may be their views and opinions,
nor to forecast for us, even were they able at
this time to do so, what the nature of their re-
port will be. But we have a right to do some-
thing much more actually important; namely,
to ask our readers whether they realize the
importance of the questions under discussion
by the committee, whether they are substan-
tially as one with regard to the precise nature
of the evils from which the trade suffers, and
whether they will be ready to listen with a sym-
pathetic ear to the committee' report. It is
quite vitally necessary to know these answers
to the questions here implied, because until we
do know the answers and can, as it were, really
analyze our own position in the matter, it is
plain that we shall not derive much benefit
from the unselfish labors of Messrs. Lawrence,
Coffin and Jansseu.
The fact that the Manufacturers' Association
has considered it necessary to appoint a com-
mittee charged with discovering ways and means
for a more thorough and effective exploitation
of the player-piano, and with investigating in-
ternal conditions of the player trade, constitutes
in itself confession that reforms are needed.
We do not pretend to say offhand what those
reforms should be, nor is it our business to tell
the committee what they no doubt can better
tell themselves; but we do think it proper to
examine the present condition of the field and
make some report on it.
To this end we have asked three men in the
trade, whose opinions are always considered
worthy of respect and attention and who repre-
sent three different branches of the industry,
to give us their respective opinions regarding
these matters.
What a Manufacturer Says
An Eastern piano manufacturer whose pianos
are well known among the high grade instru-
ments and who takes an intelligent interest in
the player, says:
"The Association's Research Committee can
accomplish a good deal if it will go after the
facts straight, which I think it will. It seems
to me that the player industry is at sixes and
sevens and is wandering around in the dark
without a clear notion of whither it is bound.
Yet I cannot see any reason why the aim of the
trade should not be clearly defined and clearly
pursued. The player-piano has been the naughty
child of the piano business ever since its birth.
To-day, after fifteen years of growth and cul-
tivation, we find that the player is still made
in so many varieties of type that some at least
must be completely wrong; we find, after all the
battles of the past, not an approaching settling-
down to business, but an approaching battle
over the power-driven as against the foot-driven
player; we find the music roll trade torn by
disagreements and technically so out of har-
mony within itself as to be almost split over
the hand-played versus straight-cut question;
and lastly we find the retail trade yelling for
cheap players, selling on ridiculous terms and
absurd prices, cutting the music roll business
to pieces with price irregularities and now com-
plaining that the public has lost interest in the
player and that its days are numbered.
"The picture may seem overdrawn but it is
not enough so to matter. What does matter is
the question of remedy. It seems to me that
the first thing to do is to acquaint the retail
trade with the fact that the manufacturers can-
not afford to have the player butchered by the
retailers and that the very cheap player is
simply killing the industry. Then the manu-
facturers might also realize that they themselves
are at least partly responsible for the conditions
that exist, and that in a mad race to get out of
the game all that is in it, they have encouraged
abuses which the public now resents to the
extent of manifesting indifference. Therefore
the manufacturers should consider carefully the
question of a national advertising campaign
calculated to give the public a better under-
standing of the player and a greater respect for
it. Again they should seek earnestly to develop,
each in his own business, a real co-operation
with the retail trade, for the purpose of en-
couraging insistence upon quality, bringing
about better methods of sale and more intelli-
gent demonstration; and assisting in public edu-
cation by helping along the cause of musical
appreciation wherever this can be done in con-
cert with their local representatives all over the
country.
"Let me make a radical statement: The piano
business, and the player business too, will
never attain full prosperity until those who con-
trol its destinies take a little time off once in
a while to consider the cultivation of true musi-
cal feeling in the American people, who are
to-day for the most part a crudely unmusical
people."
What a Music Roll Man Says
"You cannot carry on the player business
without music rolls any more than you can sell
automobiles without a gasoline supply. Yet the
manufacturers and retailers alike in the roll
field are complaining, with justice, of the cha-
otic conditions which exist and are clamoring
for relief. Well, here is my guess as to what
is wanted:
"First of all, let us music roll men get together
in the new roll association, forget our past dif-
ferences, and set ourselves to study a serious
situation. Then let us earnestly try to see with
one eye both the facts and the remedies and
join in putting the latter into effect. The evils
we have to deal with are threefold. They con-
cern the player manufacturers, the dealers and
ourselves, and the Manufacturers' Association
Research Committee should pay strict attention
to them. The first is the cut-throat competi-
tion which has reduced profits to the vanishing
point and now operates to restrain a much
needed increase in prices. The second is the
extraordinary increase in the cost of the raw
material. The third is the positive stupidity
of the retailers who, while yelling at us because
they say they do not make any money in the
music roll department of their business, insist
on educating the public to believe that rolls
are to be given away with soap wrappers or a
pound of tea, decline to do a thing to aid us in
circulating standard and permanent music, de-
cline to hire intelligent help and organize in-
telligent systems in their music roll libraries
and cannot bring themselves to treat the music
roll as a sane proposition worthy of sane and
systematic handling.
"The remedy is simple, I am sure, but how
much it is likely to be taken up, I do not know.
My idea is that if we could only once get to-
gether in a way that would enable the various
branches of the music industries to know each
other's problems, understand each other's point
of view and discuss freely and fearlessly all
the many problems we have in common, we
should soon learn that what benefits one bene-
fits all and that what hurts one hurts all. I
am strong for the Klugh Chamber of Com-
merce plan and hope earnestly that it will win
out; for in that lies the best promise, I think,
for relief from the evils which oppress the in-
dustry to-day.
A Merchant's View
The merchant whom we quote below was
risked to read the foregoing statements before
saying anything for himself. He is a mature
graduate of the University of Hard Knox, and'
withal a broad-minded, well (though self-) ed-
ucated man, with a fund of good humor and a
quiet smile that carries warmth and encourage-
ment wherever it goes. He is rich and success-
ful. His employes call him, almost affection-
ately and quite humorously, "The Emperor."
He read the foregoing, smiled, and then began:
"Well, we dealers are quite used to having
all the sins of the trade heaped on our heads;
and I for one don't mind admitting that we
deserve a good deal of it. But there is another
side to the question.
"The manufacturers pushed the player on to
us without, in most cases, adequate, preparation
and without any systematic attempt at helping
us to organize our resources for taking care of
so new a thing. The natural result is that the
player trade has, like Topsy, 'just growed.' It
has never been exploited nationally, and there
hase never been any attempt on the part of
manufacturers to study out the thing technically
or commercially, so that every player is dif-
ferent, every one is full of experimental ideas
that are only hung on to because no one has
sense enough to abolish them, every player has
a dozen unnecessary talking points that con-
fuse the dealer and impose on the public. As
for music rolls, the story is just the same; ig-
norance, boasting, superficial 'let-er-go-Gal-
lagher' methods, claiming everything on earth
with no't a shadow of foundation for the claim.
We dealers have had to present to the public
this hodge-podge of undigested ideas, experi-
ments and conflicting claims, without education
in the merits of the pneumatic scheme and
without any systematic help from the whole-
saler. Certainly we have been stupid! Is it
any wonder?
"The remedy is education, co-operation, and
honesty with each other. The player is not
going to be run out of town by the talking ma-
chine, no matter what any panic-stricken fool
may think. All we need is co-operation between
wholesaler and retailer, free and fair discussion,
and associations that really mean something.
I am going to work for Paul Klugh's plan, not
because I think that plan a marvellous inspira-
tion, but because closer co-operation is neces-
sary and the Klugh plan will do something to
help us get it."
Now what could be plainer? The answers
are at hand. May the research committee think
of things like these when they are preparing
their report.