Music Trade Review

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EDITORIALLY
Welcome 1932!
In extending our best wishes to the music industry
for a new year full of accomplishment T H E REVIEW
takes the opportunity of expressing our appreciation
of the loyal support that has been given this publication
during the past year by representative houses of the
industry.
For our part, we pledge continued efforts throughout
1932 in our service to the music trade in all its
branches.
A NEW YEAR IS WITH US—
WHAT DOES IT PROMISE?
W
Year, is the courage of those men who have devoted, their
lives to the manufacture and sales of musical instruments.
They have carried on in the face of great difficulties, have
adjusted themselves to unpleasant conditions and will, with-
out question, reap the reward for their persistence. It takes
no small measure of courage to develop manufacturing
activities and carry on most of the work with a bottle of
red ink close at hand and no definite chart of the future,
but the only alternative is to quit.
We will let the national trade leaders carry the burden
of prophesying for 1932. What we do know is that there
is less talk of depression and more of ways and means for
meeting the situation and carrying on. Every upward trend
of business, and they are to be found, is welcomed with
enthusiasm that is most encouraging. And in every upward
movement, the music trade is going to participate in full
measure.
HAT of 1932?
The business prophet has lost his standing.
Platitudes and involved phrases have ceased to
brighten the spark of confidence. The leaders
in business hesitate to make definite statements regarding
the future because the signs and the omens heretofore con-
sidered infallible are no longer useful as guides to what is
in store for American industry. In a way this is good be-
cause it has led the business man to face the facts and work
for a steady improvement in trade rather than to sit by in
anticipation of an overnight return to normalcy.
However, all is not blue, particularly for the music
tradesman, for there are definite facts that offer much en-
couragement. In a great many centers it is found that the
business of the music merchants, comparatively speaking, is
in better shape than that of merchants in other lines often
considered more essential. The percentage of those retailers
who have passed out of the music business is considerably
lower than the average in many other industries, and those
who are left represent a most desirable element, many of
the survivors having already passed through one or several
previous periods of bad business. It is significant that when
wheat and cotton advanced in price the result was an im-
mediate improvement in sales of musical instruments in those
localities directly affected, which may be taken to prove that
the music trade will be close to the front of the line in the
march upward.
At the same time the movement for personal expression
in music is gaining impetus steadily, particularly in the
schools of the country. It is true that, at the moment, this
wide-flung interest has not demonstrated itself convincingly
in terms of musical instrument sales, but certainly it is pro-
viding a most magnificent field for future activities. Nor
is it necessary to be over-patient, for the impatient music
merchants who have decided upon hard work as an outlet
for that emotion are actually getting results now. Selling
is more difficult, prices are lower, terms often longer, and
profits smaller, but in a surprisingly large number of cases
there are tangible profits. To operate, even on a small profit,
while weathering present conditions, is an achievement.
The most encouraging sign of all, as we face the New
HERE'S PROOF OF THE WIDE
INTEREST IN MUSIC TRAINING
I
NDISPUTABLE evidence of the widespread interest in
the musical training of children on the part of school
authorities and teachers is found in the experience of M.
Hohner, Inc., the prominent harmonica manufacturers,
during recent months. Late in August the company adver-
tised in a number of educational magazines that there was
available a new book on the playing of the harmonica includ-
ing instructions in the organization of harmonica groups.
Within a period of three months there were received and
filled requests for over a quarter of a million of the books, com-
pletely exhausting the first printing of 200,000 and making
necessary a second edition. A careful compilation of the
replies indicated that approximately 80 per cent came from
teachers.
Although the small cost and easy playing possibilities of
the harmonica may have had much to do with the interest
shown, the manufacturers of other musical instruments also
report a steady increase in school interest in music training.
This interest is not developing the buying urge as rapidly as
might be desired, but there is no doubt but that it is having
a tremendous influence on musical merchandise sales today
and represents the one really bright spot in the future pros-
pects of the business.
Its potential possibilities are
tremendous.
PERSONAL EXPRESSION IN MUSIC
FIND ITS WAY INTO THE NEWS
F
ROM two widely separated points recently have come
reports that should prove most encouraging to those
who make, sell, and are interested in the future of the
piano and piano music.
From Belgium there is a newspaper report that there has
been a noticeable increase in the demand for pianos in that
country because of the revived interest of its inhabitants in
personal expression. They have reacted from the mechanical
THE
MUSIC
TRADE
REVIEW,
January, 1932