Klarinet Archive - Posting 000086.txt from 2007/09

From: Fred Jacobowitz <fbjacobo@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Neilsen Concerto Puzzelment
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 20:34:57 -0400

Gary,
I suspect it has more to do with the peculiar economics of sheet music
sales than anything else. You see, the piece is published by
Heinrichschafen (sp?) which, while not really small, has relatively few
well-known wind pieces and not enough works to interest a dealer in
making a large order (known as a "Stock Order"). Stock Orders are
once-or-twice-a-year events in which the store/dealer can buy music
from individual publishers at up to 70% discount off the MSRP
(manufacturer's suggested retail price) if the volume of the purchase
is big enough. Since, e.g., Boosey has a huge catalogue of wind pieces
and a large selection of everything else, it is worth Music Sales' time
and money to do a stock order (usually of at least a few thousand
dollars worth at discounted prices). That way, they can sell the music
at its MSRP and make a nice, tidy profit.
Music dealers HATE, HATE, HATE having to deal with small publishers
whose catalogue has only a few desirable pieces because there is not
enough material to do a stock order for. So the dealer goes to a
wholesale 'jobber' who buys music from myriad small companies but
doesn't offer much of a discount (if at all). Under these
circumstances, the discount drops to 20% or less, which makes the piece
not worth a dealer's time unless it gets a specific order for it. The
dealer will get the lousy discount no matter how many copies it orders
so it won't bother taking up storage space by buying many at a time
just in case they get a few more orders for the piece than usual. Since
a dealer does periodic orders from a jobber anyway, the dealer decides
it might as well wait until it has a large volume order coming up in
order to save shipping.
Occasionally you'll find a specialty store which cares about other
things than just the bottom line. This kind of store will carry
EVERYTHING even if it knows that it will sell only a few of many
different items per year. One such store is Frank Music on 54th St. in
New York. Another is Eble Music in Iowa City. When I worked at
Russianoff Winds many moons ago, we did this also. Sometimes Eble even
referred clients to us for certain titles (and vice versa).

Fred Jacobowitz

Kol Haruach Klezmer Band
Ebony and Ivory Duo
On Sep 21, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Gary Van Cott wrote:

> Here is something that I don't understand. Perhaps some of the clarinet
> professors can explain it.
>
> I have been under the impression that the Neilsen Clarinet Concerto is
> one of the most important pieces in the clarinet repertoire. Based on
> that I would assume that nearly every clarinet performance major would
> study it.
>
> Now even if there are only 2000 performance majors out there (that
> would
> be less than 4 per professor) you would think that the US sales of this
> piece would be at least 500 a year. Yet Music Sales doesn't seem to
> sell enough to keep it in stock and every time I need it they have to
> order from Europe and it takes ages. Are people using library copies,
> photocopies, professor's copies?
>
> Any insight would be welcome.
>
> Gary
> --
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