What made it work
They instantly had the catalogue depth their specialism actually needed, not a general-interest selection.
Their existing shop agency built the integration. No new supplier, no procurement, no learning curve - the people who already knew their shop did the work, and it took weeks rather than months.
Their storefront, their checkout, their customer. Nothing moved.
Freedom to promote it themselves, in their own voice. Their first newsletter to their own list moved sales more than four times over.
Kurt Maas
He was also the first person to import Hal Leonard editions into Germany - beginning with big band charts, then choral, wind band and instrumental.
01
He started his company in his living room in 1969. He had studied in Boston, wanted to bring a jazz correspondence course back to Germany, and ended up building the jazz department at Munich's Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium. Fifty-six years later, the company is still family-owned, still in Feldafing in Bavaria, and its shop Alle-Noten.de is Germany's largest seller of Hal Leonard digital sheet music.
02
They were an early adopter of digital: Alle-Noten.de has been online since 2001, and the company started offering has offered sheet music for download via Sheet Music Direct in-store fifteen years ago – long before digital sheet music became a core part of the market.
03
Over the years, their digital offering grew alongside the shop. But one important part of their core catalogue was still missing: band music. While customers could already find and download 250,000 digital titles, the band category that defines Alle-Noten.de was not yet available digitally through their own storefront.
04
HL Connect changed that. The integration was built by the agency that already runs the Alle-Noten.de shop - a team they've worked with for years, comfortable with API work. They had their vendor credentials at the start of October 2025 and were selling by the first week of November. For the first time, customers could also immediately download band scores – all within the familiar Alle-Noten.de experience.
05
What their customers value is not what you might expect. Musicians plan late and need music for tonight's rehearsal. Directors lose a single part out of a set and need to replace it. And customers outside Germany avoid the shipping costs that come with ordering print from the United States.