Ken Vinen asks, "Why can't we have music rolls with the words printed
on them?"  I think the answer is that ugly four-letter word: cost.

The player piano industry was enjoying a revival when John Malone
established Play-Rite amd produced 88-note piano rolls.  New player
pianos meant new piano roll customers.  John invested in all the
equipment to print words on the music rolls and he hired workers to
punch the syllables on a long stencil belt and print the syllables on
the music roll.  The investment and labor was recovered in his sales.

But the big market no longer exists to support production runs of 50
or 100 copies of the same song.  The roll producers (the folks who
organize recutting projects) now work in runs of 10 or 20 copies, and
the extra cost to add the words means a big increase in the price.
Even in the hey-day of the Pianola the "Word Roll" cost more because
of the extra labor.

High-tech?  Even if a continuous-feed laser printer were available
(and affordable), much labor is still needed to accurately transcribe
all those short syllables from the original roll to a computer file for
the laser printer.  Then each copy of the music roll must individually
be carefully passed through the laser printer (probably without the
guidance of sprocket holes).

Sure, an ingenious guy like John Malone might develop automatic
production equipment and robots to do all this, but he could never get
his investment back.  The "Word Roll" is simply too expensive for the
customers of today's limited market; even making piano rolls without
words is marginal.  That's why Play-Rite no longer sells piano rolls as
catalog items: recutting organ and orchestrion rolls is more profitable.

Robbie Rhodes
Etiwanda CA