BUSINESS BUZZ
Finding a new melody by Ron Fortier
A
t last count, they are currently teaching over 550 students a week. It founder, Todd Salpietro noted that the business has existed for 25 years, but “we've grown quite a bit over the last five or six years since we rebranded from ‘TJ's Music’ to the ‘Fall River Arts Academy.’” The Academy offers private and group lessons in most of the popular instruments including piano, guitar, violin, drums, bass, clarinet, and the ukulele to name a few. Add voice lessons to this impressive list. And it’s all available at one location. Salpietro played in a lot of local bands professionally, but “I always had a thing for business, and I thought that it would be really fun to open a business. Twentyfive years later I can say it's not an easy task to take on, and it's not for the faint of heart.” Todd first established his business as a music store, focusing on drums. He soon realized that expanding into a full-line music store would be best and included guitars, professional DJ audio and lighting equipment, and lots more. But there
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The Fall River Arts Academy has become the largest independently owned music school in the South Coast.
was always a focus on providing music lessons. At one point, Salpietro was teaching 75 private music lessons a week and “would be running the music retail shop and teaching lessons out of the back room at the same time.” Eventually, his wife Tammy started to work with him and things started to accelerate. He now had someone on the front line to take care of the retail and music lessons for him. Soon, they were hiring teachers and built new lesson rooms in the basement that they still use today. Together, he and Tammy grew the program from 100 students in 2017 to over 500 today.
A new tempo
The time was right. Tammy joined the business during a slump in the housing market. And coincidently, they noticed an uptick in their music lessons. “All these guys are coming in with construction boots on, with a big pickup truck outside and a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee,” Salpietro says. They all wanted to buy a guitar and begin taking music lessons because the
May 2022 | The South Coast Insider
The Academy offers private and group lessons in most of the popular instruments including piano, adrums, bass, clarinet, and the ukulele to name a few downturn was the first time that they'd had to themselves in quite a long time. Todd and Tammy quickly learned that the music business could thrive in a bad economy. On the other hand, “The buskers and all the other musicians suffered. They had no venues to perform at, and that was tough. There was nothing beautiful about the pandemic, right?”
