Free for Teachers: The Partnership Continues

Yuval Kaminka
Yuval Kaminka

A little over a year ago we announced our lasting and deep partnership with music teachers, and what a year it has been! Following the joint work with you, our beloved educators, we stacked features, reports, methods, exercises, songs, webinars, resources and much much more (all freely available, for teachers only!). As I'm looking back at all we have done and dreaming about what will come next, I find myself feeling deeply proud. Proud of our supportive community, our loyal (and patient) users, our amazing team and our visionary investors, for all that we have accomplished in the past year.

A Difficult Decision

Business-wise, the decision was one of the toughest I have ever made, but one I whole-heartedly believe in nonetheless (as covered by Fast Company, among others). Looking back, I stand fast with our adventurous decision. With our growing community, newly found collaborations with key industry players, as well as Apple choosing to demo us in retail Apple Stores across the US, we are steadily moving towards our goal of removing all  barriers to make music learning much more accessible to everyone and anyone.

[bctt tweet=”We are moving towards our goal to make music learning more accessible to everyone & anyone.”]

So what have we added in the past year?

In this 1-year-recollection I wanted to reiterate my complete and utter admiration towards music teachers, fighting the music education uphill battle every single day with such fierce passion I can only hope to draw into our inner workings here at JoyTunes. The work listed below could not have happened without you.

(Not part of the community? Start with our vibrant FB teacher group)

So what have we seen this past year? It's all a little bit of a blur, but I'll try to highlight the main things added to Piano Maestro:

  • Method books – Working with the best publishers and educators (Alfred Publishing being the most prominent of them), we have added over 20 new method books for practice in Piano Maestro.
  • Songs & Exercises – Over 1,000 new songs and exercises added, bringing the total to over 2,500!!!
  • Supporting introduction levels as well as intermediate with pre-notation and more advanced content (like Hanon and Czerny)
  • A comprehensive teacher interface, including "Today's Students"
  • Progress over time fun reports for students along with weekly rewards
  • Ability to share and print sheet music from the app itself
  • Multiple Features – fast forward / rewind, notation enhancements, bulk download of content, FAQ, tutorials

New & Exciting – Simply Piano

The most exciting of these (at least to me) is the introduction of our new app, Simply Piano, geared at the very beginners who don't normally have a teacher. The app launch was super successful (#1 on Product Hunt, multiple press coverage, etc.) demonstrating the potential. This is another step in our grand vision of making it easier for many new people to start learning music, ultimately increasing the number of players along with more teacher hours, sheet music, instrument sales and, well, music in the world…

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How did this partnership impact you and your students? Please let me know in the comment section below. There's still a lot ahead of us, but with your help we'll get there. I can't wait for what comes next.

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