Taking Note of Music Trends Is Key to Success

As a young accordion-music publisher in post-World War II New York, Morty Manus got a chance to hear his customers at a recital. It wasn’t pretty.

American-born youngsters pumped clumsily on the squeeze boxes of their immigrant parents and grandparents, creating a racket so homely it gave Manus a stomachache. His gut told him time was running out on his core product, and with it, the company he inherited from his Russian-born father.

“I knew it would never be a truly American instrument,” Manus said. “We weren’t going to make it publishing only accordion music.”

Nearly a half-century later, Alfred Publishing Co. is one of the nation’s leading publishers of print music, thanks in part to Manus’ willingness to keep changing with the times. Now based in Van Nuys, the company posted $29 million in sales last year with a 12,000-title catalog that runs from banjo to violin. And while it still puts out some accordion music, Alfred’s forte is piano instruction. The publisher’s basic adult piano course is one of the industry’s top sellers, with more than 1.5 million copies in print.

The third generation of Manuses is now steering the company into the cutting-edge fields of early childhood music education, new media and electronic commerce. But industry watchers say it’s the old-fashioned touch that sets Alfred apart from competitors.

Manus still responds to letters personally, knows many of his far-flung base of music dealers by name and sends birthday cards to loyal music teachers--all 20,000 of them. He has been known to make expensive changes to his music books in response to seemingly trivial complaints, like the time a customer objected to an illustration of an anatomically correct bull.

“I’ve never believed in hiding behind a company name,” said the soft-spoken septuagenarian. “How could I know if our products are any good if I didn’t know my customers personally?”

Alfred’s rise from a small-time sheet music outfit to a leading music educational publisher also speaks to the steady growth of the music-making industry. U.S. sales of printed music, instruments and other music-making equipment now top $6.5 billion annually, up 50% from the early ‘90s, according to industry estimates.

Well-heeled baby boomers craving creativity beyond their computer screens are returning to the music instruction they abandoned as kids. Adults ages 25 to 55 represent the fastest-growing group of aspiring pianists, according to the National Piano Foundation. Meanwhile, budget cuts in public school music programs are boosting the rolls of private music academies, as parents respond to recent research showing music education may make kids smarter. Enrollment at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music, for example, has jumped nearly 50% in the last two years to more than 900 students, due largely to the burgeoning number of preschool musicians.

All those beginners, young and old, are prime targets for Alfred, which is the nation’s third-largest music publisher behind Hal Leonard Corp. of Milwaukee and Miami-based Warner Bros. Publications. Those two giants boast combined sales of more than $135 million and dominate the market for print arrangements of popular tunes from radio, television, movies and Broadway. In contrast, Alfred’s bread and butter is musical instruction, from the “do re mi” basics to band methods and music theory.

About 60% of the company’s sales come from piano instruction, a crowded field where more than 30 methods currently vie for students’ pocketbooks. But selling music isn’t like selling soap powder. To get their books into the hands of students, publishers first must sway their teachers, who don’t like the hard sell. Ditto for the 5,000 mom-and-pop music dealers who form the backbone of Alfred’s distribution network.

How to reach them? By hitting the road for more than 100 U.S. cities a year to show off the musicians behind the music.

Alfred’s piano courses, like those of its competitors, are developed by composers whose works likely will never be played in Carnegie Hall. Still, there is a lot more to creating a piano method than diagraming “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Many of these musicians are icons in the field of piano pedagogy, which is the craft of teaching piano. Like authors on a book tour, educational composers take to the back roads and big cities each year, plugging their publishers’ wares at piano workshops that can draw several hundred music teachers at each session.

It is here that piano instructors come face to face with their heroes, the composers whose handiwork can help even dull students’ shine. Teachers and music dealers have showered visiting Alfred star Dennis Alexander with flowers, asked for his autograph, even posed with him in snapshots to show budding pianists back home.

“My job is to be a goodwill ambassador . . . and to get them excited about the method,” the composer said. “When I leave that workshop, hopefully every teacher there is going to be buying Alfred products.”

And buy them they do. Since its 1982 debut, Alfred’s Basic Piano Library has become one of the field’s fastest-growing piano methods. Composed of nine courses and 212 books that have been translated into 13 languages, the collection sold a combined 2 million copies last year.

The reason? Clean engraving, colorful illustrations--and not too many notes. Manus concluded that the company’s previous piano methods weren’t big sellers because they were too intimidating for beginners.

“What was needed was simplicity,” said Manus, white-haired, lean and fastidious as a quarter note. “It just seemed logical to me.”

Some instructors sniff that the materials are too simplistic, geared for students of modest talent and teachers with little imagination. But most agree that the books are eye-catching, pedagogically sound and fun to play, a welcome change from the days when piano practice meant hours of dreary scales.

“Alfred is a barometer by which other publishers measure themselves,” said Rachel Kramer, an assistant executive director at the Music Teachers National Assn. “It is perceived as a real leader and innovator.”

Founded in 1922 in New York City by a musician named Alfred Piantodosi, Alfred got its start publishing popular Tin Pan Alley hits such as “Ragtime Cowboy Joe.” Manus’ father, Sam, a classically trained violinist, purchased the company in 1928 after the talkies snuffed out his career as a silent movie accompanist.

Armed with a business degree from City College of New York, Morty Manus joined the family firm in 1952. There, the journeyman pianist discovered he had a knack for editing and market development. After that stomach-churning accordion recital, he steered the company into guitar and piano instruction, now the cornerstones of Alfred’s catalog.

Not all his moves have been profitable, such as the company’s ill-fated attempt to enter the college textbook market. But one decision Manus has never regretted was relocating to Southern California in 1975 to escape the harsh Eastern winters.

Today, the company employs 150 people worldwide, divided among the Van Nuys headquarters, an upstate New York distribution facility, and sales offices in Australia, Singapore, England and Germany.

Fueled by the success of the revamped piano method, sales doubled in the 1980s, then doubled again in the 1990s with expansion into international markets. Yet the business remains very much a family affair. Manus shares an office with his wife, Iris, whom he met when she was a teenager working part time in the New York headquarters. The couple’s sons, Steve, the company’s 46-year-old chief executive, and Ron, 36, vice president of creative development, likewise met their spouses on the job.

Although their parents remain active and have no plans to retire, it is this younger generation that’s pushing Alfred into new territory. Steve, a former software developer, is spearheading the development of an electronic restocking system that will allow its dealers to receive what they need, when they need it. The stores won’t get saddled with excess inventory and they won’t have to pay for the goods until they sell. Meanwhile Alfred will get real-time sales data to help it make more accurate decisions about when to reprint.

Such electronic data interchange systems are commonplace in other parts of the retail industry, but they are virtually unknown among independent music dealers, according to Alan Friedman, a West Hartford, Conn.-based accountant and music industry consultant.

“What they’re proposing is revolutionary for this industry,” said Friedman, a partner in Friedman, Kannenberg & Co. “They’re trying to change the way print music has traditionally been sold.”

Other new initiatives include interactive CD-ROM tutorials and a new piano course for young children called “Music for Little Mozarts.” The company is moving into new distribution channels as well. Music superstores such as Sam Ash and Guitar Center have become big customers, while Alfred’s CD-ROM titles have made their way onto the shelves of major electronic and computer retailers. The company has yet to establish its own e-commerce site for fear of alienating loyal dealers. However, e-shoppers can buy Alfred products on the Web at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

Manus worries a bit about losing the family touch as the business grows larger. But after all these years, his gut is still telling him how to do business.

“Treat people like you want to be treated,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

Sound of Success

How do you keep making music for more than 75 years? Alfred Publishing Co. is a prime example of keeping in tune with:

* Markets: When accordion music sales sagged, the company expanded into other instruments.

* Customers: Birthday cards and piano clinics keep music teachers smiling.

* Products: It took three attempts, but the piano course is now a bestseller.

* Technology: Electronic restocking and new media are the next big things.