Key Elements for an Effective Private Music Lesson Studio Policy

Why Creating Policies are Important for Your Music Students

Without an effective studio policy, you're likely to experience inconsistency and confusion with students. My philosophy has always been to create policies that are the most strict version of yourself.

In practice, we always want to provide our students with a wonderful customer service experience. We also need to set and respect our own boundaries.

A clear, brief policy is always the most effective for the studio and private music lesson teachers in our Outside The Bachs community. When your policy is strict, it allows us to provide a bit of leniency to our students while still maintaining those boundaries.

3 Core Policies

There are three core areas we need to address in the policy:

• Tuition structure and payment

• Scheduling and cancellation

• Termination of lesson enrollment

Tuition and Payment Policy

The predictability of charging each student the same amount each month and the ability to collect payment via autopay makes monthly flat rate tuition the most effective way to create stability in lesson revenue.

In our studio policy, it’s important to outline student expectations for this tuition structure. We should clearly describe what monthly tuition includes. Flat rate tuition is based on a minimum number of guaranteed lessons. For most studios we work with, this number is between 40 and 44 over a calendar year.

A significant strength of flat rate tuition is that we can make it all-inclusive. Often teachers choose to include recitals, some materials, and possibly studio classes or quarterly masterclasses. Eliminating add-on charges builds strong rapport with students and, paired with our autopay system, also helps us to better separate the money from the music. Both students and instructors prefer when lesson time doesn’t have to be spent discussing fees for the next recital!

Cancellation and Make-Up Lessons

One of the biggest frustrations I hear when meeting new teachers is around scheduling. Frequent requests to reschedule lessons can cause big headaches, especially when our calendar is full with other students and gigs.

For studios not yet on a flat rate system, especially those collecting tuition at the lesson each week, it also means that income can fluctuate significantly each month.

You aren’t required to provide make-up lessons for any reason. However, I prefer to give grace where I can. Including a minimum notice period in the studio policy, usually between 24-48 hours, is a great way to establish clear expectations for student schedule communication. It also helps to set a limit on make-up lessons each term. Most studios find allowing two rescheduled lessons in the fall semester and spring semester is a great balance.

Moving to a Tuition Model and Flat-Rate Subscription Service

My favorite tuition policy wording is “Tuition reserves your weekly lesson time, but may not directly correlate to time taught in the case of student cancellation.” In practice, I am absolutely going to do my best to reschedule a lesson for a sick student. However, by not including this exception, my policy gives me space to let them know when that isn’t possible due to my schedule.

Moving to a tuition model, like the flat rate subscription, fully supports this policy. Not only is tuition collected in advance, but it also moves our students towards paying for access to the information and support we provide, rather than the exact number of lesson minutes.

Ending Lesson Enrollment

When payment is collected on a subscription, it’s important to include a notice period for cancellation.

Our recommendation is at least two weeks so that, even during a longer holiday break, an instructor has plenty of time to see the email request to stop lessons and make that change in the system. Many studio owners in our Outside The Bachs community prefer a 30-day notice period. This gives them more time to wrap up projects with students and gives better closure in the relationship. As a bonus, it also provides a bit more time to fill that time slot from their waitlist.

Enforcing a policy around enrollment termination is tricky if students aren’t already on an automatic payment system. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we always advocate for the subscription-based flat rate model!

There are so many other small details we can include in a studio policy, but these three sections are imperative. Shorter studio policies are more likely to get read, and are easier to discuss in an initial trial lesson or consultation. Let your policy enforce your boundaries, while you maintain a strong relationship with your students.

Kelly Riordan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Outside the Bachs, LLC - a program designed to give musicians the skills to create their own private music studios and deliver the highest quality instruction to their students.

Her work has brought her to the forefront in music business education. In addition to hosting The Outside the Bachs Podcast, Riordan presents regularly at conferences and universities, with recent appearances at The NAMM Show and The Ultimate Music Business Summit, in addition to lectures at the University of Tennessee, Miami University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Kelly Riordan holds a Master of Music (MM) in Performance and Literature from the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Music from the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.