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

[Dixiejazzdata]

 Two words come immediately to mind:     FAKE BOOKS,  followed closely by Cheap Musicians , who want to sell their own stuff but not pay to buy others stuff.

It's so popular hardly anybody wants to buy it anymore:))   Easier to steal it or borrow it from a friend who may have already bought it or BORROWED it from another and another and another.   Looking back in the History of Blues and Jazz now some of those old songwriters had a valid reason to not record their original songs or publish the notes in sheet music.  They actually thought that their fans would continue to come out and see and hear them perform live if that was the only place they could hear the songs and the style of the Band.    Of course they had their stuff stolen and published anyway and ASCAP and BMI and the early founders made all the money from their music anyway.   The Music Industry has more thieves than the Mafia, but wait THE Music Industry is often referred to as the Mafia.

Bart,

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Ringwald <rsr at ringwald.com>
To: B.B. Buffington <dixiejazzdata at aol.com>
Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sun, Dec 25, 2011 2:14 pm
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Sheet music sales  -  Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2011


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."
-30


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

Wireless Internet is like Sex.
You still want it,
even if it's unprotected and in a public place.



_______________________________________________
To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing 
list, or to find the online archives, please visit:

http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz



Dixielandjazz mailing list
Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com