Have your say: letters to the editor, April 2023

February saw the very sad announcement that seven of the eight Musicroom stores across the UK were closing on March 17. This was a particular blow as one of them is my beloved Banks Musicroom in York (nothing to do with Banks Publishing, which is thankfully alive and well!). I think the massive reduction of music shops creates an incredibly difficult issue. Claiming that teachers can just go online simply isn’t a solution for new or unseen titles. Music shops are indeed ‘showrooms’ where many teachers properly check the contents and overall quality of a book before buying. When I recently attended the Casio Grand Hybrid Teacher Development day and the Music & Drama Expo, time and time again teachers told me they wanted to see books ‘in person’ before purchasing them. Many had purchased books without doing so and were sadly disappointed.