Music Trade Review

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EDITORIALLY SPEAKING
is forgotten. The public is fickle; it admires and buys those
things that are most prominently before it at the moment, and
which have been kept before it.
The part that advertising plays in enabling concerns to
overcome existing sales resistance is emphasized in the recent
report of the United States Bureau of Foreign and Domestic
Commerce, which analyzed the factors that enabled some 200
companies to maintain their sales standards. Of eighty con-
cerns who listed advertising as the principal factor, twenty-
nine had increased their appropriations, nineteen had main-
tained them, fourteen had used more aggressive copy and only
four had curtailed their advertising.
That this is not all preachment is proven by outstanding
examples in this trade and elsewhere. Every concern that has
gone ahead or even held its own during the period through
which we have passed has been consistent in its advertising
in trade publications and elsewhere. Perhaps, and very likely,
the percentage of the advertising cost has been higher than
under normal conditions, but it has been regarded as insur-
ance. First, of the substantial investment of the company
in equipment and good will which is being maintained and
carried on, and, secondly, for the future of the business.
DEALER OFTEN TO BLAME FOR
DIRECT SELLING TACTICS
C
ONSIDERABLE criticism has been directed, and
rightly, against manufacturers of musical instruments,
particularly of the band and orchestra type, as well as
publishers of music, for selling direct to schools, local
organizations and teachers in competition with dealers. It is a
practice that is deserving of strong condemnation when the
local dealer is active and carries the proper stock to meet re-
quirements in his territory. There is another side of the
question, however, that is not so favorable to the dealer, and
which grows more prominent as the tendency towards hand-to-
mouth buying persists. What about the dealer who does not
carry a representative stock but demands territorial protection
nevertheless? We have in mind several instances where in-
dividuals have written to publishers of edition music for copies
of special numbers after trying in vain to get them from vari-
ous dealers who, ostensibly, represented the edition. The same
situation has arisen in the matter of band equipment, the dealer
not having the stock necessary to equip local units. If the
music merchant does not consider his business seriously enough
to make a proper investment in representative stock, he cer-
tainly cannot blame the manufacturer or publisher for selling
into his territory direct. In fact, his attitude often provides
the excuse for certain manufacturers to pursue a like direct
selling policy in territories where such action is not warranted.
The retailer who seeks territorial protection is obligated to
give the manufacturer or publisher proper representation, and
that can only be done by carrying full stocks in his store.
WILL MUSIC DEALERS OR OTHERS
HANDLE TEN-CENT POPULAR PRINTS?
T
ADVERTISING IS INSURANCE
UNDER EXISTING CONDITIONS
H
ARDLY a day passes without a request being re-
ceived at T H E REVIEW offices for information
regarding this or that manufacturer, or for some
special product that through clever exploitation and
intrinsic merit has won favor in the trade. The general tenor
of the letters is somewhat as follows:
"Will you kindly advise us if the
Mfg. Co.
is still making pianos?"; or, band, or string instruments,
or perhaps music rolls.
These letters may be taken by the optimistic as reflecting
a buying interest among dealers but carefully analyzed they
represent an indictment against those whose business it is to
supply the trade with musical instruments and parts. These
manufacturers and supply houses in search of ways and means
for economizing have cut down their advertising appropria-
tions or wiped them out completely, in the belief that the
momentum of their previous advertising or the reputation of
their products would carry them through until conditions
change.
Theoretically this idea is fine, but practically it is suicidal
if carried to extremes. In the first place there is no such
thing as momentum in advertising, that is, sufficient momen-
tum to enable the business to profit by the advertising long
after it has stopped. Nor does the finest business reputation
represent any great asset if it is allowed to lie dormant and
8
O handle ten-cent popular music or not to handle it—
this is a problem that is facing sheet-music dealers today
and from all accounts is keeping some of them quite
worried. Various distributors of music have sounded
out the dealers to find out their attitude and while the ma-
jority seem to favor sticking to higher prices, they do so
with reservations, waiting to see what progress is made by the
ten-cent editions.
The argument of the sheet-music dealer seems to be that,
with popular music on his counter priced from twenty-five to
thirty cents, he could, not afford to handle a ten-cent edition
without facing the danger of having a lot of the higher-priced
prints remain on his shelf. Yet this same dealer will probably
handle pianos priced at $2,000 or more and others of the
same size priced at $500, and in his musical merchandise
department will have banjos at $25 and others at $250.
It is hard to tell just how far this ten-cent music is going
to go. Syndicate stores are showing considerable interest in
the low-price publications as are the various news companies
who see a newsstand market for ten-cent music as well as for
low-priced records. The situation, therefore, resolves itself
into the question as to whether the music dealer is going to
handle ten-cent music or whether he is going to encourage the
syndicate store to become his competitor. It has not been so
many years since the popular music counter was one of the
centers of attraction in the ten-cent store. Is the music dealer
going to see that appeal is confined to his own store or is he
going to let the syndicate man get away with it?
THE
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW,
December,
1931