Veddatorial

THE LESSON ACADEMY

By Dan Vedda

This month’s rant is about the proliferation of the “Lesson Academy” as a vehicle for music instruction. It’s another example of our industry abdicating (consciously or not) some of its power and influence to entities that will not necessarily work in our best interests. The Lesson Academy model has expanded throughout the country, sometimes led by extraordinary educators who love teaching but have no affinity for retail, but also, unfortunately, sometimes led by people who have no affinity for education, either.

If you’re a retailer that does not offer lessons, this phenomenon may not be on your radar. Perhaps you’ve benefited in some way because local Lesson Academy students happen to buy things from you. You may even have developed a synergy with one or more of these academies to help drive sales, offering some sort of commission for referrals. But to the many stores that still offer lessons, the Lesson Academies are a mixed blessing at best.

Sure, lesson-only facilities get people playing, but often, that’s the endpoint. Nothing guarantees that their students will purchase anything from you. If you’re a retailer that offers lessons, you are considered competition, at least as far as the academy operator who is solely focused on the number of bodies booked into the lesson studios is concerned. It’s a disincentive to point those students to your lesson-offering store, which is why so many Lesson Academies point to Amazon instead.

Your store’s web presence and ecommerce efforts may help, but again, there’s no guarantee those academy students will buy from you or even discover you. If they’re buying their household needs from Bezos-Mart, the inertia (and that “but I get free freight!” imperative) is hard to overcome.

That sense of competition is one reason I have an issue with academies. The other main gripe: Some cause more harm than good, not just to retail, but to the students themselves.

First, let me state clearly that I believe in-person lessons in a brick-and-mortar facility of any kind are still viable. The wave of students we’ve added to our lessons program that are soured by the online experience makes me believe “in-person” still has the advantage, pandemic notwithstanding. But I also don’t think a Lesson Academy is automatically the best expression of this method of teaching.

If you’ve looked at some of the Lesson Academy marketing (and it’s ubiquitous: I get emails, snail mails, Facebook ads and other hits almost daily), the main thrust of the pitch is “How to Maximize Enrollment and Profit.” The tactics and rah-rah motivational blarney recall those sketchy seminars for house-flippers and Amway meetings.

In all the materials I’ve looked at (and I’ve never “joined,” so of course I haven’t seen it all), the main topics are enrollment, retention and profit. I’ve never seen a word about the quality of the instructors or overall educational goals for the schools. I get the emphasis on increasing enrollment above all else, in the sense that all the revenue has to come from lessons because there’s nothing else to bring money in. I just think it makes it harder to do the best job of educating the students.

I’ve also encountered some owners of these Lesson Academies. Some are truly dedicated, committed to education and feel this is the best use of their skillset. But for every one I’ve met that’s passionate about education, I’ve met one or more that might as well have bought into a Subway franchise instead — if they could have afforded it. I’ve seen owners who have almost no musical background (other than perhaps playing in band or taking piano as a kid), who have no clue about organization (we’ve seen scores of students fed up with the “no teacher/ double-booked slot” problems they continually encounter with these academies), or who have the personality of a stereotypical license bureau worker.

I have faculty members on my staff who have put in time at some of the many academies in our market, either as regular teachers or as one of the constant “subs” who fill in for absent teachers. (Because the academy motto is essentially “No Lesson Left Untaught,” there is heavy use of substitute teachers. I won’t even get into the confusion and frustration the students feel when faced with a rotating cast of instructors, except to say that I’ve also booked many students who

would not put up with random teachers showing up to teach.) Those I know who have taught the academy circuit were frustrated that the focus was more about retention at any cost; angered that the academy often tried to dictate methods and teaching styles, again with an emphasis on retention more than pedagogy; and pleasantly surprised at how much more money they could make teaching at my store.

So, unless the owner is a passionate education advocate, the model as sold by the motivational gurus is not really pedagogically empowered; it’s profit driven. In my opinion, it takes advantage of the students and the teachers, valuing head count and retention ahead of educational achievement, and treating teachers as undifferentiated cogs in the mill machinery. It bears a resemblance to some of those shady dental centers that push procedures on patients and push the dentists to work faster instead of better.

If you’re a Lesson Academy owner who can say, “But I care about our students’ education!” then bravo, this article isn’t about you. As I said, I know some wonderful academy owners. I also know some who only view their business through a spreadsheet, and figure if teachers are in a studio with a student, there’s education going on — mission accomplished.

So, what can retail stores with lessons do? Basically, the opposite of what these problematic Lesson Academies do. Resist the temptation to take half (or more) of the tuition, and instead see that teachers are well-compensated. Avoid using subs for every teacher absence so students can build a rapport with their instructor. Spend the time needed to make sure everything stays organized and on track. Just as important: Don’t treat students as captive sales prospects. Educate them and get them excited about playing, and sales will follow.

If you vet your teachers well, you’ll take on some of the best in the area, the sort who stay long term and bring people in just by their reputation. You’ll have a faculty that believes in you and will point students to your store rather than Amazon. Your students will have a relationship with a teacher rather than a chain of short-term teachers and subs — the kind of relationship that the best players cite as pivotal in their development. And the progress your students make will get the attention of directors and parents, who will think of your store as a nexus for music education.

No, it’s not quite as easy as it seems, of course. You’ll still have all the tribulations with your lessons program that you’ve always had. But if you focus on good education rather than squeezing every last dollar out of the program, you’ll more than make up for it in goodwill, traffic, sales and, yes, profit.