Hi,  I was interested in the comments about the "Sight Trumps Sound"
study described in yesterday's 130820 MMDigest.  However, I find it a
serious stretch to infer from this study that mechanical music machines
with a visual effect will be more popular than ones without.

But I can provide an informal study, done many years ago, that actually
did produce these results.

My wife's cousin lives in Blackfoot, Idaho.  Many years ago, she and
her husband ran a retail establishment which included a western dance
hall, a western wear shop, and country store of sorts.  They also
collected mechanical music machines and displayed over a dozen of them
in the store.  Customers could play them with a coin.

Since her husband spent some summers restoring music machines at
Virginia City [Montana] their machines were in generally good condition.
She tells of one summer when they did an experiment.  They had two,
similar nickelodeons.  On had the instruments visible through glass in
the front.  The other one had similar instruments but they put a panel
inside the window so you couldn't see the instruments.

The machines were placed on either side of the entrance.  The machine
with visible instruments got several times more play than the one where
you couldn't see the instruments.  And, yes, they switched them back
and forth so the result wasn't affected by which side of the entrance
they were on.

I'll give you another example.  My wife and I used to spend the day at
the local outdoor history museum.  We played a 26-key Bruder barrel
organ on a cart.  Kathay has a toy monkey hand-puppet and she sat on
a little stool beside the organ holding the monkey.  The monkey held
a tin cup in its hand, on the end of a stick).  We took in 3 to 4
dollars per hour.

When Kathay took a break for an hour, I put the tin cup on the corner
of the organ in plain sight.  When Kathay was gone, I collected not
a penny, in spite of the fact that I chatted up about the same number
of people.

My conclusion?  The more forms of entertainment you provide, the more
popular the attraction.  It's not just the music that counts, it's the
total impact.

Regards,
Craig Smith

P.S.: By the way, it appears that the little fur monkey puppet with the
tin cup was more entertaining than the big monkey turning the crank.