Overview: Your Teaching Studio

Welcome to the Teaching Studio Help Guide! Please send us an email to support@musiclessons.com if you have any suggestions or feedback.

MusicLessons.com Teaching Studios have always allowed you to freely advertise your teaching practice. But did know that you can now use it to teach music online?

Pricing

Platform Pricing & Service Fees

You can use your Studio to provide both free and paid learning experiences through Products that you create in your Studio. A Product can be a Meetup or a Pre-Recorded Publication (a Lesson or a Course).

Though you are not required to use our Payment Service to sell learning experiences through your Studio, we think you will find it worth the cost. All your transactions are easily accessed for your accounting tasks, and your students can access their payment history as well. Click here to find out more about our Payment Service.

Free Learning Experiences

We do not charge any service fees when you offer free learning experiences through your Studio. Generally, this is how you will use your Studio if you using other payment services.

Charging For Learning Experiences

You can use our Payment Service to sell learning experiences through your Studio, and you can charge whatever you want. We deduct a small service fee from each sale, along with a payment processing fee. The remaining amount is credited to your account and you will be paid when initiate a Payout from your Studio's Account Settings page.

Your service fee is based on the subscription plan that you choose for your Studio. You can find out which plan you are subscribed to in the Dashboard of your Studio Settings.

Studio Plan Subscriptions

We offer both free and paid subscriptions for your Studio. Each plan includes a set of features and data allowances. Choose the plan that is right for you and what you need for your teaching practice. View our Pricing page to see a comparison of available plans. If you have any questions about your plan, send us an email at support@musiclessons.com

Service Fees

Meeting Service Fees

When you use our Payment Service to sell Meetings for Private Lessons and Group Classes through your Studio, we charge a small service fee, plus a payment processing fee for each sale that you make. The amount we charge is dependent on the plan you have, which you can find in the Dashboard of your Studio Settings.

Though you are not required to use our Payment Service to sell Meetings through your Studio, we think you will find it worth the cost. Click here to find out more about our Payment Service.

For up to date pricing information and to compare plans, visit our Pricing Page.

Publishing Service Fees

When you use our Payment Service to sell your Publications (Lessons and Course), we charge a small service fee, plus a payment processing fee for each sale that you make. The amount we charge is dependent on the plan you have, which you can find in the Dashboard of your Studio Settings.

Though you are not required to use our Payment Service to sell Publications through your Studio, we think you will find it worth the cost. Click here to find out more about our Payment Service.

For up to date pricing information and to compare plans, visit our Pricing Page.

Student Subscription Service Fees

When you sell student subscriptions, we charge a small service fee. The amount we charge is dependent on the plan you have, which you can find in the Dashboard of your Studio Settings.

For up to date pricing information and to compare plans, visit our Pricing Page.

Credit Card Processing Fees

A non-refundable credit card processing fee is charged to the purchaser at the time of a sale. The fee is 2.9% of the total purchase price, plus a $0.30 transaction fee.

Teachers and organizations are not charged a credit card processing fee.

VIP Pricing

If you are in our VIP program, we charge 10% of your sale price, plus a payment processing fee. For example, a $100 meeting will cost you $10.00, plus a credit card processing fee of $3.30, for a total of $13.30. You make $86.70.

Interested in participating in our VIP program?

Getting Paid

When you sell learning experiences on MusicLessons.com, whether they are Pre-recorded Publications, or Meetups (lessons or classes), your account will be credited for the amount of each sale, minus any service fees.

When you have an available balance that is eligable to be paid, you can request a payment by clicking on the appropriate button in your Studio's Account page.

We partner with Stripe to pay our members. See https://stripe.com/global for a list of countries where you can be paid. You must be able to enter all the information that Stripe requires in order to be paid. This includes your personal information as well as your bank account information. You are subject to the Stripe Connect Platform Agreement, which includes the Stripe Terms of Service.

Payouts typically take between 1-3 days to complete. For more information, visit the Stripe documentation.

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Pending Transactions

Some transactions in your account may be considered pending until such time that you specify your obligations to that sale have been fulfulled. For example, if you sell access to a class, your obligations are considered fulfilled when you set the Meetup page to Archived. You can continue to sell access to the archived version of the class, and those transactions will not be pending because the Meetup has no future obligations.

Visibility: Who Can Access Your Studio?

Your Studio can be Private or Public (as well as Offline while you are setting it up).

Private studios can only be accessed by people in your Student List who have a MusicLessons.com account. Public studios can be seen by anyone, including people who are not logged into MusicLessons.com.

To change your visibility, go to your Studio and open the Studio Settings > Dashboard page.*

*IMPORTANT: If you are using a paid subscription plan, you will first need to activate your subscription before you can make your Studio either Private or Public!

If you want to setup a private Studio, you will need to add students. Go to the Your Students page, and then click on the Add Student or Import button. Then you can send out an email to let them know about your Studio, which they can access after they signup for an account.

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NOTE: Studios that are Offline can only be seen by you, unless you previously sold content using the Publishing or Meeting services, in which case your Studio will continue to be accessible by your customers.

Your Students

When you use your Studio to provide teaching services, you will build list of Students that you can manage via the Your Students page. From this page, you can manually add or import Students into you Studio. In addition, any MusicLessons.com member who follows your Studio, purchases one of your products, or adds any of your free products to their library, will automatically become one of your Students.

When you have Students, you can communicate with them via private messages and email, track their learning experiences, and invite them to your online classes or other learning experiences.

Sending Student Emails

When you send emails to your Students, your email is used as the reply-to address for each email that goes out. Keep in mind that you may receive bounced emails if any of the addresses that correspond with your students are no longer being used. If this happens, you can delete the student from your studio.

Teaching With Your Studio

Your Studio allows you to offer your students online learning experiences through Products you create using our Publishing and Live Meeting services.

There are no up front costs associated with creating Products using these Services. In fact, you can provide teaching experiences to your Students through your Studio without paying MusicLessons.com anything if you choose to use your own payment processing and tracking system.

Alternatively, if you choose to sell Products (also referred to as learning experiences) on MusicLessons.com, a service fee will be deducted from each sale and your account will be credited with the remaining amount. Fees vary depending on the service you are using, see Pricing. You will be paid when your account reaches $50.00.

How Do I Offer Teaching Experiences?

Simply go to your Studio Settings > Pages and enable the pages that you want to use. If you want to teach one or more students remotely, or be able to offer your Students a meeting place where you can archive their recordings, turn on your Meetups page. If you want to create pre-recorded Lessons and Courses using our Publishing Service, turn on your Pre-Recorded Publications page.

Once your pages are turned on, you will find the appropriate buttons to create new learning experiences for your Students (i.e. Products). When they're ready, you can send your Students invitations to access them.

Why Use MusicLessons.com?

There are lots of technical pieces that a teacher has to glue together in order to offer online learning experiences to their students. Video conferencing is only one piece of the puzzle. Archiving large recording files, accepting payments, and marketing yourself are others.

Your MusicLessons.com Studio is a complete Learning Management System (LMS) that allows you to do it all... and is built specifically for musicians with a musician-friendly media player.

Teaching music online without using an LMS is the equivalent of building a house without a tool belt. Sure, you can do it, but it will take you a lot more time and effort. Our platform allows you to provide rich, interactive learning experiences that are easier and more enjoyable to use.

Learning Experiences

Learning Experiences are Products that you create in your Studio, and are either pre-recorded Lessons & Courses using our Publishing Service, or Meetup pages where you can teach live Lessons and Classes using our Meeting Service.

These experiences provide you and your students with a media-rich environment that's built specifically for teaching and learning music.

You can create these Products in your Studio after you've enabled the appropriate pages in Studio Settings > Pages. Building pre-recorded experiences can be done by enabling your Pre-recorded Publications page. Offering in-person or remote learning experiences is done through your Meetups, Lessons & Classes page.

How Much Does It Cost?

It doesn't cost anything to use MusicLessons.com if you use your own payment method and tracking system.

Alternatively, if you want to charge money for any of the learning experiences that you offer through your Studio, you set the price and MusicLessons.com deducts a service fee from each sale and your account will be credited with the remaining amount. Fees vary depending on what service you are using - see Pricing.

Meetups, Lessons & Classes

The Meeting Service allows teachers and students to attend live video conferencing sessions using the Zoom Video Conferencing app that is directly integrated into to your Studio. You can also use any other video conferencing service that you choose, or none at all.

What Is A Meetup?

Meetups are essentially a media-rich, interactive, web page that can be accessed over and over again. They provide all the functionality and organization needed to conduct classes with hundreds of people, or lessons with a single student.

Meetup pages allow you to upload video, audio, images and PDF files to support your student's learning experience. They also include a discussion that can be used by all participants, and you can write notes about your sessions and any media files that you upload.

What Are Meetup Sessions?

Meetups can have any number of Sessions, which are scheduled times when meet with the students in a Meetup. Each Session can be viewed in the Meetup page and can include notes, audio/video recordings, and other media files.

In-Person Sessions

Sessions can happen in-person as well as remotely. When you meet in person, you can record the Session using a camera built-in or attached to your your computer, and then upload the recording at a later time.

How Many People Can Remotely Attend A Session?

Live sessions can be public or private, and up to 300 people can attend using your integrated Zoom account. You can also use any other video conferencing platform that allows more people to attend.

Record And Save Meetings

You can record your meetups in order for you and your students to access it after it takes place. This allows the attendees to continue communicating about, and referencing the material you covered.

Public Meetups that are classes can be archived, priced accordingly, and sold again as an archive. Anyone who purchased the class either before or after it was archived will have full access to the discussion as well as all recordings and other media files.

How Much Does It Cost?

Free Meetups don't cost anything, or charge whatever you want and MusicLessons.com will deduct a service fee and credit card transaction fee. See Pricing for more details.

Terms

• Meeting Service Policy

Pre-Recorded Publications

The MusicLessons.com Publishing Service allows you to build a library of pre-recorded, media-rich, interactive Lessons and Courses.

What Can I Publish?

You can publish Lessons and package them up into Courses if you want. Both Lessons and Courses are called Publications.

• Lessons are the smallest unit of information that you are teaching. It is up to you how much information you include in a Lesson. You can create as many Lessons as you want. Each Lesson can have any number of video and/or audio files, images, PDFs, formatted text, tablature, or notation. These items can be added and arranged using our easy to use, online Lesson Editor. Lessons do not need to be in a Course, but often times it makes sense to organize them in the form of a Course.
• Courses are an organized collection of Lessons. You can decide how to organize the Lessons within a Course, and Lessons in a course can also be sold individually if you want. Courses can also have Sections that allow you to group Lessons together as needed.

In addition to the many different types of media that can be added to Lessons, all Publications include a discussion that is available to all members who can access them.

How Much Does It Cost?

Free Publications don't cost anything, or charge whatever you want and MusicLessons.com will deduct a service fee and credit card transaction fee. See Pricing for more details.

Terms

• Publishing Service Policy

How Can I Start?

To enable the Publishing Service, go to your Studio Manager, click on the Pages tab, and toggle the page named Pre-Recorded Publications.

Selling Subscriptions

Your studio allows you to sell subscriptions to your students.

For more information, see Student Subscriptions

Discussions

Engage with Students in Your Own Discussion Forum

Create and manage an open discussion where your students can engage with you and other students. With your discussion forum, you can:

• Create topic threads, which are questions and/or ideas you want to discuss.
• Foster communication between your students, adding value to their experiences.
• Become known as a teacher that interacts with students.
• Allow your forum to be public (anyone can post) or private (only your students can post).

Articles

Write Articles For Your Community

If you like to write, use your Articles page to inform and entertain your community about things that you find interesting. Your articles:

All your articles will appear in your Studio and also in our when your Studio is public. You can also:

• SEO friendly for digital marketing
• Articles are included in our platform-wide Articles Page
• Upload media for videos, audio, images, and PDFs
• Automatically links YouTube.com videos
• A discussion is included in each article

Testimonials

Show Off Kudos From Your Students

There's nothing better than a testimonal to bring on new students. Ask your students to go to your Testimonials page and fill out a testimonial. You will be notified and if you approve it, it will be shown with your other testimonials, and your student's profile score will be boosted.

To use this feature, turn on your Testimonials page in your Studio Settings -> Pages settings.

Your Songs Page

Build a collection of songs that can be accessed from anywhere and shared with people.

Each song includes as much information as you want, including YouTube videos, audio & video files, PDFs, TAB, MusicXML, and Images.

Use our YouTube for Musicians Browser Extension directly on YouTube to easily import videos.

Audio and video files are played using our musician-friendly media player!

Organize your songs into lists that can be shared with your peers. These lists can be used as set lists that can be shared with your band or musicians who are sitting in with you.

Media Files

Your studio includes a Media Files page where you can access all the media files (PDF, audio, video, images, etc) that you've uploaded into your studio. These files may have been uploaded as part of a song, or other content in your studio. You can also upload files directly on this page that are not associated with other content.

Important Note:

Your Media Files page cannot be seen by anyone except administrators of your studio, however these files can be shared with followers (and your students, if you are a teacher) by clicking on the share link for the corresponding file. When shared, the person who the file is shared with will be notified, and they will be able to see it in their dashboard of your studio.

Student Subscriptions

You can offer your students a paid subscription plan. Students pay you a monthly fee to access various offerings of your choosing in your studio. These offerings can include any of your published, pre-recorded lesson/course material, as well as exclusive meetings.

This feature is currently in BETA, meaning that it is currently feature complete, but is still in development. Please contact support@musiclessons.com for more information.

What's In A Student Subscription?

You can include any of your published, pre-recorded lesson/course material as well as any live meetups that you create through your studio. The way you include these products is by setting their price. Once you've created a student subscription plan, and then you change (or set) the price of a product, you will be able to include it in your student subscription plan.

You will also need to inform your students what they will get in their student subscription. This is done in the plan settings when you create or change a subscription plan. Keep it short and use a bullet list of what you their subscription will include.

Setting Your Student Subscription Price

You can set any monthly price you want for your student subscription. MusicLessons.com will deduct a service fee for each payment that is made.

Student Subscription Service Fees

When you sell student subscriptions, we charge a small service fee. The amount we charge is dependent on the plan you have, which you can find in the Dashboard of your Studio Settings.

For up to date pricing information and to compare plans, visit our Pricing Page.

Products For Your Student Subscription Plans

You can add specific products (Meetings & Publications) to each of your student subscription plans. This allows you to offer multiple tiers with a different price point, or to otherwise customize what your students get with their subscription. These products will show up in your plan details page, and student subscribed to a plan will have full access to these products.

VIP Program

MusicLessons.com offers a VIP Program for qualified educators. Teachers who are in the program receive the following discounted pricing benefit in exchange for helping us build a better platform:

If you are part of our VIP Program, you will receive following discounted service fees that are deducted from the sale of any of your learning experiences:

• Subscription Discount: 25% off any paid plan!
  Choose a paid subscription for your studio and get a discount.

• Payment Service Discount: 10% of each sale*
  When you use our Payment Service for lessons, classes, and pre-recorded publications (lessons and courses), your service fee is calculated from your total sale price multiplied by this discounted rate.

• Free Zoom Pro Account: integrated directly into your meetings, $149.90/year value.

• VIP Badge: V.I.P. your VIP badge will be displayed with your profile and recognizes your participation in the program.

• Premium Support: we will be available to help with all aspects of building and supporting your studio and you will receive the highest attention possible if you ever need help.

Please view our Pricing page for current pricing information for all our platform services.

*Does not include a payment processing fee of 3% of the total sale, plus $0.30 per transaction.

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Interested in participating in our VIP Program?

Visit our VIP Program page and fill out the VIP Request form, or send us an email at support@musiclessons.com.

How To Get Additional Help & Support

Please visit our Support Page for support options. You can also send us an email at support@musiclessons.com. We will do our very best to respond quickly.