Scan 3
Musical Courier 1927-12-15: Vol 95 Iss 12, 1927
36 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1ments as "fool proof," and there are many piano houses today throughout the country that owe their present existence to what was provided for the piano dealers in the phonograph business. All know the great work that was done in this direction through advertising, through the employment of the great artists of the day, and the placing of the music in the homes through the records.
3The phonograph had its "dip" due to the World War, but again is upon the market, and piano dealers are finding a rapid market for it, and this through the direct appeal of the manufacturers of the phonograph and talking machine to the business sense of the piano dealers.
5The phonograph at one time reached a point where the piano dealers made the piano secondary. When one walked into a piano store, the first floor was given over to sound-proof rooms. There might be a piano found on the first floor, but generally it was on the second floor, and all energies were bent in waiting upon the people who entered the store to purchase the phonographs and records.
7How Radio Helps
9There are some who claim that the radio has knocked out the talking machine and the phonograph, but whatever business was lost as regards the phonograph and talking machine was due to the lack of energy of the dealers who, with a well-organized force and experience of many years in the soliciting business on the outside of the warerooms, now utilize that experience in personal contact in the selling of phonographs and talking machines.
11It can be seen then that the radio has not been a detriment to the phonograph, but is now proving itself to be an aid, and what this aid means to the phonograph applies as well to the piano. A great pianist is heard over the radio; a number may appeal to those who are listening in, and a demand created for the record, or for the music roll of a reproducing piano.
13There are some who have studied the subject, have applied it to their business policies, and have found that the radio is an aid to the reproducing piano as well as the piano, the player piano and the phonograph. It is possible for a family to have a piano, a radio, and a phonograph in the home. These instruments are not beyond their means. To these they may add an automobile, and the musical instruments and the automobile can be bought upon such terms that a family can possess all of these productions, if the overhead of housekeeping is kept down; and if those who sell the musical instruments and the automobile follow the family's example as to reduction in overhead, thus meeting half way the economical handling of the overhead of the household on the part of those who sell the music instruments and the automobiles the piano dealer in his music store will meet wide success.
15The Largest Radio Plant
17The writer was told that the Atwater Kent plant was the largest in the world. This statement is made in a separate advertising section of the New York Tribune, of December 4. This special section of the New York daily took up six pages, giving the history of the Atwater Kent institution, its growth from very small proportions to its present organization of over 5,000 people, the manufacturing and selling of over a million Atwater Kent musical instruments, and this through the power of music.
19The radio fills other functions in transferring sound, but music is the basis of its success, for the people want music, they demand music, and they will have music. The programs that are now sent out Sunday evenings by the Atwater Kent concern are surprising in the variety of entertainment presented. The greatest artists are obtained and the programs present a diversity of music that meets the demand of all people, whether that demand is for the best music, popular music, jazz music, the sermons and lectures of the day, and all that goes towards the highest purposes in satisfying intelligent people and giving to the masses what has heretofore been impossible except through the reproducing piano and the phonograph.
21The reproducing piano, however, carries with it the purchase of the records of the great pianists; the phonograph carries with it the purchase of the records of the voice, musical instruments, and all that pertains to music. The advantages as to the reproducing piano and the phonograph is that they are permanent. The hearing of an Atwater Kent program is just the same as that of going to the music auditoriums and hearing the program of the artists themselves. After the hearing, it is lost, except in memory.
23True Value of Radio
25It is here that the value of the radio is presented as an aid to the piano and talking machine. One hears music over the radio, and there is given to the ear something that is retained in the mind in the way of pleasure, and a permanent record of that music is desired. There is no way or means of making a tangible record of what comes over the radio. It is in that the radio is proving it is an aid to the dissemination of the best in music, and probably these programs of the Atwater Kent institution are leading the people into the paths of righteous classic music, and training the ear to an apprehension of higher tone appreciation, thus leading to the piano as an individual instrument that, played manually, will give an understanding of music in its highest forms.
27The fact that today there are more music teachers in this country, that there are more young and old studying to play the piano manually, is evidence of the influence of the radio in this direction. Probably the manufacturers of the reproducing pianos will question this, but it will be found that after a radio has been placed in a household, if the desire for a piano is not at first evidenced, it soon will be, and the desire aroused for a piano or phonograph in order to have a record of this or that satisfying composition that has given pleasure the once, but may not be again presented over the radio.
29If heard on the radio, a composition such as appeals to an individual, may be repeated through the aid of the tangible mechanisms reproducing in the shape of music rolls and phonograph records, which the piano dealer should control as part and parcel of his business.
31Future Radio Merchandising
33The time is coming when the radio will need solicitors, just as the phonograph and talking machines of today are being sold through the personal contact of the outside worker. With all of this, with music or tone as the constant advertiser in the home, the piano dealer must realize that he has what we might term a tie-up from one instrument to the other. This brings forward the desire on the part of those musically inclined in a family to wish for other instruments, such as are shown in what we term the small musical instruments that allow of individual efforts from the violin to the harmonica.
35One can go over the programs that are so liberally given, and, it might be said, the Atwater Kent programs are representative of the highest type, and realize what is going on in the millions of homes of the people throughout this country day after day and night after night. It is creating a love for music that is manifesting itself in
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