Why My Music Studio Is Different
Most studio software is built to manage administration.
My Music Studio was built to support teaching as a practice, with administration designed to reinforce learning, not take centre-stage.
That difference shows up everywhere: how roles are separated, how access is handled, how features are designed, and how real teaching workflows are respected.
Below are the principles that guide those decisions.
Teaching workflows come first, not generic admin
Many studio platforms focus primarily on billing, scheduling, and record-keeping. Those tools matter, but they are only part of the job.
Music teaching involves:
- lesson preparation and follow-up,
- student engagement between lessons,
- communication with families,
- and careful handling of student work and access.
My Music Studio was designed from the perspective of how lessons actually run, not just how studios are billed. Screens, flows, and defaults are shaped around teaching tasks and the real contexts in which teaching happens.
Lesson notes are a teaching space, not a textbox
In many apps, lesson notes are little more than stored text.
In My Music Studio, lesson notes are treated as a continuation of the lesson itself. Notes can include:
- interactive tools such as metronomes, recorders, and practice trackers,
- listening activities and flashcards,
- games, challenges, and media attachments.
This allows teachers to design homework that reflects how students actually learn, and helps students stay connected to their lessons between sessions.
The goal is not just to record what happened, but to support what comes next.
Administration that reinforces learning
Scheduling, invoicing, and communication tools are designed to be efficient, but they are not isolated from the teaching experience.
Administrative actions in My Music Studio are deliberately shaped to:
- be fast and easy to use, so information stays accurate,
- tie into real teaching events, like lessons, performances and exam records,
- and surface information for parents in a way that’s simple and low-effort, so it’s actually read.
When administration is easy to do, it actually gets done.
In My Music Studio, administration is treated as infrastructure for teaching, not a separate layer teachers have to mentally switch into.
Related reading:
→ To be written article about how good administration is essential for effective teaching and learning
Access Designed for Real People
Education software deals with children, families, and personal records. Treating access casually creates risk, but overcomplicating it makes participation harder than it needs to be.
My Music Studio designs access differently, around a small set of principles:
- access is not the same as identity,
- different roles need different levels of visibility,
- and only the most relevant information should be surfaced to each person.
Parents and students don’t need to learn a complex system to participate. That’s why access is role-aware, invitation-based, and deliberately bounded. Sharing is specific, actions are obvious, and exposure is controlled, so families can engage easily without being pulled into yet another system they don’t need.
Designed for family contexts
Music education rarely involves just one relationship.
Parents, grandparents, and extended family often support a child’s learning, and My Music Studio is designed so they can all participate, without needing to create accounts or learn a new system.
Family access and performance sharing are designed to:
- respect real family dynamics,
- avoid unnecessary account creation,
- and keep teachers in control of what is shared and when.
This means everyone who supports a student can be involved through My Music Studio, while access remains appropriate, intentional, and limited to what makes sense in an educational setting.
A free plan that reflects values, not limitations
My Music Studio offers a Free Forever plan that is genuinely usable.
Teachers can run an entire studio at no cost, with core teaching and administrative tools included. Paid plans focus on added convenience (such as automation, billing, bulk scheduling, and advanced workflows) while the foundations of running a studio remain available even after a trial ends.
This reflects a simple belief:
core teaching infrastructure should remain stable, not be withdrawn once you’ve started relying on it.
Designed deliberately and explained openly
Many systems rely on opaque decisions and unexplained constraints.
My Music Studio takes a different approach. Where design decisions affect safety, access, or correctness, they are made deliberately and explained openly.
That includes:
- separating roles instead of merging them,
- favouring correctness over convenience,
- and saying “not yet” when a feature would introduce more risk than value.
For teachers who want to understand how the system works, and why it works the way it does, those decisions are documented publicly.
In summary
Other platforms focus primarily on administration.
My Music Studio makes administration easier and strengthens the educational side of teaching by design.
It is built for teachers who care not just about efficiency, but about correctness, clarity, and the long-term experience of their students and families.