[Dixielandjazz] Sheet music sales - Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2011

[Robert Ringwald]

Awaiting the Day Sheet Music Dies
by Nick Neyland
sWall Street Journal, December 24, 2011
For New York's sheet-music sellers, laid low by every innovation from the radio to
the ringtone, there hasn't been a holiday season that approached the boom days of
1934 in a long, long time.
That was the year "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," now an unavoidable fixture for
shoppers, made its November debut on Eddie Cantor's radio show. In the weeks before
Christmas, the hit by two songwriters from Tin Pan Alley sold about 25,000 copies
each day in sheet-music form, according to music historian Philip Furia.
Today, Richard Turk is lucky to sell 100 printed copies of the song in a year. He
said the top 2011 seller at his Colony Records store, a transcription of Adele's
"21" album, sold about 500 copies.
"I don't have a great feeling that [the store] will last past the point when our
time comes, the lease comes up, and we have to go," he said.
But it's not all bad news in the small retail world of sheet music. Broadway tourists
keep Mr. Turk in business. "I will sell as much 'West Side Story,' for instance,
as I did 40 or 50 years ago," he said. New shows like "The Book of Mormon" also drive
sheet-music sales.
The very location of Mr. Turk's store is as entwined with music history as the product
he sells. By the 1950s, pop-music production in Manhattan had migrated from Tin Pan
Alley, the collection of songwriters and music publishers on West 28th Street, to
1619 Broadway -- better known as the Brill Building. Colony, founded a couple blocks
away in 1948 by Mr. Turk's father, relocated in 1970 to the same office building
where Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond and Carole King honed their craft.
"I hung out in the Brill Building as a teenager," Mr. Turk recalled. "I wanted to
be a drummer, but Phil Spector told me I wasn't good enough."
Colony is not quite alone in Manhattan's small sheet-music sector. Frank Music Company,
a fixture on West 54th Street since 1938, specializes in classical transcriptions.
Owner Heidi Rogers runs her store like a hidden clubhouse for local musicians. She
greets regular customers by name and fetches sheets from yellowing folders behind
the counter.
"I absolutely love my job," said Ms. Rogers, who bought the store from founder Frank
Marx in 1978. "The tough part is, I get angry because now I feel very often people
only come in if they can't get it online."
Mr. Turk is equally glum about the future of his trade. "I do not have faith that
physical brick structures will be the way people will continue to shop," he said.
One of the city's sheet-music stalwarts, Joseph Patelson Music House, closed in 2009
after 70 years in business.
The pessimism of Manhattan's veteran sellers makes Richard Dowling something of a
contrarian businessman. His sheet-music store, Dowling Music, opened on 57th Street
in 2010 as an extension of a Houston-based enterprise co-owned by the concert pianist.
"It's a big enough city to have a share of the pie for everybody," he said.
For Mr. Dowling, like his peers, the draw is expertise. "Classical music, there's
multiple editions, so how do you choose?" he asks. "You have to have a human being
that's going to guide you. That's why this business sustains."
At Colony, when four longtime staffers retired in recent years, they left with a
combined 150 years of experience behind the counter, answering questions about sheet
music.
All three stores run online operations, though web-based sales only account for a
fraction of their revenue. The rapid adoption of tablet computers also looms as a
threat.
"As soon as they figure it out, people will be reading off tablets," Ms. Rogers predicted.
"That's fine with me if they're scanning in their own library, which people often
do. That's a great idea. If you're on tour you don't have to carry a suitcase full
of music."
For his part, Mr. Dowling doubts iPads will ever supplant printed scores. "You need
to see two pages," he said. "That's why music is printed in a book."
As the city's sheet-music sellers hang on, Christmas still delivers a small and reliable
boost as would-be carolers and family sing-along enthusiasts come in search of perennial
holiday hits, from Rudolph to the theme to "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
"Irving Berlin had a hit with 'White Christmas,' and it's still in print and it still
sells a lot of copies every year," said Mr. Dowling of the 1942 tune. "Because that's
the Beethoven of pop music."
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