MUSICGURUS.COM: Learn music from the world’s top professional musicians

MusicGurus.com is an online learning company that allows anyone to learn music from the world’s top professional musicians. We offer high quality, short video courses that teach students the secrets and techniques behind the music they love. Target customers are hobby musicians aged 16+ who continuously seek out exciting ways to indulge their passion. Students are motivated to learn from professional musicians who are carefully selected for their immense musical talent, passion and pedagogy.

THE IDEA

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

MusicGurus.com is an online learning company that allows anyone to learn from the world’s top professional musicians.

Target customers are hobby musicians aged 16+ who continuously seek out exciting ways to indulge their passion.
Students buy courses on MusicGurus.com for $40-50 dollars. The courses cover a specific topic and are purposefully kept well structured and focused to ensure a high completion rate.

A second product, online personal tutoring, is up-sold to students seeking personal feedback and support. Tutoring is asynchronous and fits around shifting artist and student schedules. Trials show it’s educationally really effective too.

PROBLEM SOLVED

MusicGurus solves problems for students and musicians.

Students are increasingly going online for music education but pay sites tend to be quite boring and the quality is very variable. Quality is a particular issue on YouTube where un-vetted teachers offer lessons on a wide variety of topics with no course structure or progression.

Musicians are eagerly looking for new ways to earn that fit well with their performing and touring commitments. They are aware of the opportunity of online music education as success stories circulate, but incumbent sites are closed to new teachers and designing and building their own service is an insurmountable challenge for most.

REVENUE MODEL

Students pay for access to content and personal tutoring. MusicGurus.com keeps 30-50% of all net income generated by the following transactions:

– Customers purchase a video course for unlimited, indefinite access: Price $40-50 per course
– Customers purchase a single coaching session: Price $30-80 per session

The tutoring feature is a new product and still being tested. Future revenues are currently not included in the forecasts below while we establish the potential of this feature and the use cases in which it is bought and sold.

EXIT STRATEGY

The exit for MusicGurus will either be through M&A by a strategic partner or a PE sale.

A private equity exist is also likely. For example, Sovereign Capital acquired BIM (a music college) and also the chain of “Music Tech schools”, merging the two.

One of our advisors, Francis Seriau, founded the chain of Tech schools and sold the company to Sovereign, and is well positioned to advise us on an exit of this type.

A strategic partner such as Universal Music Group or Abbey Road studios might acquire MusicGurus to leverage assets including relationships and IP, and diversify its portfolio away from music publishing.

Source: icnw