Designing Identity for a Multi-Role Music Platform

Identity seems simple until it isn’t.

In My Music Studio, the same person can legitimately appear in multiple roles:

• a teacher at one studio,

• a parent of children at another,

• and potentially a student themselves.

Each of those roles has different permissions, different data boundaries, and different expectations. Treating them as a single “user” creates subtle but serious problems.

The underlying challenge

Early versions of the platform used a single identity table for all authenticated users. This worked while usage was limited to teachers, but it began to break down as the platform expanded to include parents and students.

Parents, in particular, surfaced the core issue:

• A parent may have children in multiple schools.

• Each school relationship must be isolated for privacy and permissions.

• A single global identity cannot safely represent those relationships.

For students, the situation is similar: a student may study at more than one school, and each context must remain separate.

A key architectural decision

Instead of forcing all roles into a single identity model, My Music Studio treats identity as role-specific and school-scoped.

This means:

• Teachers are represented by a teacher identity table.

• Parents are represented by a parent identity table.

• Students are represented by a student master table.

Each of these identities:

• exists per school,

• carries its own permissions,

• and links to authentication only when that person signs in.

Authentication (login) and identity (permissions) are intentionally separate concerns.

Why this matters

This approach avoids several classes of problems:

• accidental cross-school data access,

• fragile permission logic,

• and cascading changes when new roles are introduced.

It also allows the platform to evolve safely. New capabilities, such as student logins, multi-school families, or future role types, can be added without destabilising existing systems.

Stability

The goal of this design is stability and correctness.

By keeping identities explicit, scoped, and role-appropriate, My Music Studio prioritises long-term reliability over short-term convenience.

This is slower to design, but far safer to operate — especially in an educational context where privacy and trust matter.