How to Budget for Studio-Licensed Music

Thousands of teachers are using studio-licensed music to teach their piano students. However, I still get emails from teachers every now and then who wonder “How can I afford studio-licensed music?” They mention that $9.99 for a studio license is much different than purchasing a $3.99 piece of sheet music. They are worried that they won’t get their money’s worth if they don’t have a large studio.

I want to provide you with ways that you can budget for the right amount of studio-licensed music for your studio. With so many teachers teaching students online, it’s important to be able to easily transmit new music to students. And with the economy affecting many piano teachers, having a library of music that can be printed from over saves a lot of money in the long run!

First, why is studio-licensed music such an incredible deal?

Part of the hurdle in figuring out how to budget for music is that often teachers don’t realize what an incredible value studio-licensed music provides. It really provides a huge benefit to both the teacher and student. Here are just some of the benefits of using studio-licensed music:

• You only have to purchase it one time. That’s it. You can re-download it any time you need to!
• It’s available to you immediately. You can pull it out at the lesson (in person or live online) and use it immediately.
• You are never waiting for parents to pick up or order the music. Parents just don’t have time to do that and they love when you get the music for them.
• Top composers are publishing only studio-licensed music instead of going through traditional publishers. This is mostly due to the fact that traditional publishers’ royalty rates are completely unfair to composers. See this article. Even the finest composers are shifting away from traditional publishers so the supply of studio-licensed music is going to continue to increase.
• You have an unlimited supply of that piece of music. When you purchase a studio-licensed piece of music, it means that you can continue to use the same piece for as many students as you directly teach for your entire lifetime of teaching. This is obviously an incredible deal!
• You only have to use the piece two times to get more than your money’s worth. One piece of typical sheet music retails for about $3.99. Usually you’ll have to pay shipping on top of that. So $9.99 is a good deal if you are going to use the music 2x. But it’s a steal if you are going to use it 3x or more. Think about it. Unless you are retiring this year, I can almost guarantee that you’ll use the music more than 2x. See below for why…
• You can think outside the box. A piece of late-elementary studio licensed music can be used not only for your late elementary students, but as sight reading for your mid-intermediate student, one-week pieces for your early intermediate students, and challenging pieces for your elementary students. You don’t have to be confined to the level or one student because you have an unlimited supply of the piece!
• Easy pieces can be used for sight-reading material. Carrying on with the idea of the previous reason, you can provide tons of music for your students to sight read with studio-licensed music. We all know that in order to get better at sight-reading, students have to read more music. It’s why the 30/40 piece challenge is so popular! So, why not use all those studio-licensed pieces that you originally purchased as recital pieces, as sight-reading for slightly more advanced students. For example, your EE (early elementary) studio-licensed music can be used for E (elementary) students. Your E studio-licensed music can be used for LE (late elementary) students. Your LE studio-licensed music can be used for your EI (early intermediate) students, etc.
• Studio-licensed music is perfect for the 30 and 40 piece challenge. Teachers are always worried about how to get their intermediate students able to learn 30 and 40 pieces because much of their music takes so long to learn. But again, you can easily print easier studio-licensed music every week for your older students. They can learn these in 1 week and use them to achieve their 30 and 40 piece challenges. These easier pieces count for students because again, the more music a student breads (even at slightly easier levels), the more their sigh-reading can improve. Short Sheets® are perfect for these types of challenges, and each studio license actually includes three on-page pieces!
• Here at ComposeCreate®, we even provide you with a well-organized record of all your studio-licensed purchases in your ComposeCreate® account. So more wondering where you have filed it or if you have to purchase it again. You can just log in and re-download it. We have your back! Just log into your account to do any of these things!

I could go on and on about the benefits of studio-licensed music! Feel free to share your own thoughts about how beneficial this format of music is for you in the comments below. But you can easily see that there are scads of reasons why thousands of teachers are using studio-licensed music.

Budget with Registration Dollars

Many teachers set aside money that comes as registration fees for studio licenses. If you’re not sure how to implement a registration fee, you can read about it here! In a $50 registration, you might set aside $15 per student for studio-licensed music. That doesn’t seem like much, but if you remember how every studio-licensed piece of music can be used for multiple students, that student will be getting far more than $15 worth of music in the year.

For a Smaller studio

To illustrate, let’s say you have a small studio of 15 students. If you set aside $15 per student for studio-licensed music, that gives you $225 every year! And that $225 of music can be used for more than just one student. Let’s say you use that money to purchase 20 piece of studio licensed music (most pieces only cost $9.99). Even though Zoe only paid $15 for music, she will get multiple pieces of music (at her level and below her level…remember the benefits of using the music as sight-reading and one-week pieces) for her money – far more than $15 worth! Plus, whatever you purchase this year, you can use for next year as well!

What if I’ve Already Charged Registration This Year?

Good question! Here are a few ways to handle it this year:

1. Set aside a certain budget from your tuition or already-charged registration for studio-licensed music this year. Then next year, you could increase your registration fee slightly.
2. Tell parents you will be charging them $15/$20 in August or September that will cover the cost of supplementary music for the year.

If you go for option 2 and charge a separate additional fee this year, highlight how what you are doing benefits the parents, the students, and makes their life easier.

Highlight the following:

• This helps you with budgeting because you will not have to reimburse me for any music except method books.
• It will save you time and decrease your tasks since you won’t have to order music – I’ll take care of it for you.
• I’ll be able to email the music to you or your child so that they can immediately print and have it at the lesson within seconds.
• It will give your child the best in new piano music.
• It will give your child much more music for their $15 than was possible with traditional publishers. Because I can use a studio-licensed piece of music over and over, that means that I can use the same piece for multiple students – giving your child much more music to sight-reading, learn, and therefore help them make faster progress.
• The best composers in piano pedagogy music are now selling their music directly to teachers in this way. So I’ll not only be able to get the best music from the best composers, but it will also help these artists make a living so that they can continue to make fantastic music for students.

Once you begin using studio-licensed music, you’ll see how convenient it really is. Since so many of you are teaching online, it’s even more convenient and helpful to be able to have the same music in front of you that is in front of your student.

Get the Best Deals on Studio-Licensed Music:

The best way to get the best deals on studio-licensed music is to know the “sale strategies” of a particular publisher. We try to be very consistent with ComposeCreate® music so that you know how to always get the best deal. We rarely (pretty much never) have coupons because it’s just too easy to forget to plug that coupon code in and nobody likes that feeling! So instead, we are completely up front about our sales strategy. Here it is:

1. New pieces are always on sale the week that they are released. This sale lasts through midnight Friday of that week. So you will always get the best deal if you purchase the music at that time. That’s why our Tuesday newsletters are so important!
2. We bundle music together and then discount it for added savings. The bundle’s is always the lowest price the week it is released (in keeping with #1), but we almost always have the bundle on sale for some kind of discounted.
3. Our webinars are special times to get music on sale. We often put together special bundles for the webinar or even release big new sets of music for the webinar, so always try to attend those if you want fabulous deals.

What other thoughts do you have about the benefits of studio-licensed music? Do you have other ways that you budget? Please share in the comments below. Thousands of teachers read these blog posts, and your comment could be super helpful to some of them!