MILWAUKEE—Milwaukee-based worldwide music print publisher Hal Leonard LLC has today announced the purchase of the physical and online printed music businesses of global independent music publisher The Music Sales Group. In addition, Hal Leonard and The Music Sales Group will continue to work together in the future by entering into a global licensing agreement to …
By Joel Shoemake, Pine Lake Music What do Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and choral music sellers have in common? Let’s dive in and find out. Facebook took five years to turn its first profit. Amazon took six. Eleven year-old Twitter STILL hasn’t turned a profit. So why do venture capitalists continue to pour money into companies …
by Alan Friedman, Friedman, Kannenberg & Co., PC That famous Mark Twain quote, an all-time favorite of mine, has taken on new meaning as I routinely ponder the fate of both print music and the music products retail industry at large. As some of you might remember, I gave a “Ted Talk” type presentation at …
by Tim Cose, Hal Leonard Corporation I recently had the chance to play with some high-power simulation software called Oracle Crystal Ball. It allows the user to easily iterate independent variables subject to probability distributions in an Excel framework with the goal of optimizing targeted decision variables. That sounds fancy, but at its core, Crystal …
By Mauricio Ramirez, Partituras MX When I first started working with the Hal catalog, back in 2013, as the manager of the recently founded section for printed music at Klavier, a piano store in Guadalajara, Mexico, I asked myself the obvious question for a first order: “What would sell the most and the fastest?” In …
by Tim Cose, Hal Leoanrd Corporation The 70/30 Caveat All that talk of Power Law, ratios, and consumer preference was a long way back to the most important thing to understand about the sales ratios represented in publisher’s sales graph (and many other nearly identical graphs not shown). At this leading songbook publisher, whose name …
by Tim Cose, Hal Leonard Corporation Vilfredo Frederico Damaso Pareto was born in Paris to an exiled Genoese family in the summer of 1848 and he started growing peas after moving back to Italy in his mid-forties. Pareto, an engineer by trade, observed (among other things) that 20% of the pea pods in his garden …
Probably the most difficult decision for me as a print music manager is deciding which titles to stock. The temptation to order every new and “popular” piece is pretty strong. Unfortunately, I can’t afford to carry everything, so I have to make tough decisions every day. I have to stock titles that will turn quickly …
Since the invention of the cash register, music product retailers have been searching for predominantly two things: (1) a ’59 Sunburst Gibson Les Paul in mint condition, and (2) a “rule of thumb” for buying inventory that really does work. Since I don’t know anyone selling a ’59 Paul for less than the $600,000 it’s …