BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
If you’ve ever tutored music, you’ll know the lesson itself is only the beginning. There’s scheduling (and rescheduling), invoicing (and chasing invoices), and plenty of communication that goes on between lessons. The role of a music teacher is bursting at the seams with admin, and the hours stack up. So do the costs, if you use multiple platforms to manage the workload.
Enter Muzikboxx — a new subscription platform designed to help streamline this experience for music educators. Its founder Monica Rouvellas is a music teacher and entrepreneur who founded the Sydney Violin School. She has also studied an MBA, so after spending hours each week on music admin, it seems natural that she would turn her desire for lesson efficiency into an innovative business model that others can use, too.
Monica tells CutCommon about what Muzikboxx does. We asked her to break down its core features, and explain how the all-in-one app could help you navigate music education — whether you’re a teacher, student, or parent.
Monica, how did you approach your own music admin prior to launching Muzikboxx?
As a music educator, you are not taught at uni how to manage the business side of running your own music studio or school. I was fortunate enough to have completed an MBA, which gave me a good understanding of business processes and how to manage a business more effectively.
Prior to Muzikboxx, I often found it difficult to find new students when I needed to. Parents would cancel last-minute because something came up at school, and want to reschedule the lesson within an already fully booked week. Knowing which parents had paid and which ones needed chasing was often stressful, and then I had the issue of parents paying me in all types of payments — from personal cheques to paying in cash to transferring into my bank account — which complicated my week as I often found myself frequenting the bank two-to-three times a week to deposit weekly lesson fees.
You then also find that communicating with students and their parents about lessons and what needs to be practised another challenge, particularly when some parents prefer emails, other prefer calls or SMS, and others only wanted communication through the student’s lesson diary.
I often found myself spending at least an hour a day managing these often time-consuming administration tasks for my business.
What was the turning point — or breaking point! — when you realised you needed a better system?
The turning point for me was both the time spent doing all this admin, and the cost involved through multiple subscriptions for software like Xero and Calendly, as well as advertising on Google to have my business’ website featured more prominently in the searches. I think at one point, I was spending close around $200 a month for advertising, plus my regular monthly Xero and Calendly subscriptions, which was another $75 per month.
It was also about having a good process in place — one where I can just log in, and simply focus on the business without other distractions that get in your way when you go from one task to the next.
So how did you invent Muzikboxx?
Originally, I wanted Muzikboxx to be student-centric — a platform to assist students with their music practice. From here, the idea developed into: Why don’t we first cater to music teachers, make their life simpler from both a cost and time perspective? Because at the end of the day, it is the role of the teacher to provide the systems and foundations for students to be able to practice their musical instruments.
I knew at this point that Muzikboxx was going to be a multi-sided platform, where teachers can manage their day-to-day business all in the one place, parents can search for experienced teachers who meet their financial and other requirements, and for students to be able to find everything they need to assist them with their practice all in the one place.
I wanted the platform to be simple to use. For teachers, they don’t really need the complex features offered by other accounting, calendar, and studio management apps. For parents, they want to be able to communicate with teachers, reschedule lessons, view invoices, and pay for lessons without the hassles of having to search for everything in emails and texts.
This is what Muzikboxx does. It simplifies the whole music learning process for all users on the platform.
How do you feel Muzikboxx could help make music education more accessible?
Making music accessible is a big challenge in itself. Music instruments cost money. Private music lessons cost money. Then, in a traditional sense, you have the cost of time in travelling to and from the music lesson, which for many parents is done outside school hours.
For some instruments, you may have to travel far and wide to have lessons with a teacher — for example, learning to play the harp. There are also those students who live in rural parts of Australia who are limited to learning musical instruments based on what is available in their home town.
Muzikboxx aims to reduce these barriers to accessibility. Our music teacher directory (pictured below) helps parents find teachers that are in close proximity to them, or teachers who can teach a particularly instrument via online.
As Muzikboxx grows, we also aim to take charge in making music more accessible, working with organisations, teachers, and music shops to provide lessons to children whose parents may not be able to afford music lessons. This is a work in progress.
What are some of the features you’re most proud of when it comes to connecting teachers with students?
- Music teacher directory. Not only is the directory visually appealing, we aim to provide parents with as much information about the teacher’s experience as possible, including whether the parent has a Working With Children Check.
- Online payments. This feature allows teachers to collect payments online, and allows parents to pay using a number of different payment methods and cards. We have ensured that all processing fees are absorbed by both Muzikboxx and the parent, who pays a very small surcharge, rather than teachers — so that the teacher’s income is not affected by unnecessary fees.
- Lesson scheduling. Lessons are automatically scheduled from the moment the teacher issues an invoice. This is great for teachers who want to schedule recurring lessons. In addition to this, this feature allows the parent to request a change of lesson by providing their alternative times which the teacher can then confirm, deny, or propose alternative times.
- Simplified invoicing. Invoicing is simplified; teachers can also offer discounts or minus fees already paid, such as Creative Kids Vouchers. We provide analytics on how much the teacher is earning, as well as highlighting the invoices that need following up on.
- Student practice toolkit. We provide free resources for students including a metronome and chromatic tuner. As well as this, we also provide tasks that both the teacher and student can set to help guide students with their weekly practice. This a really cool feature, and we are continuing to build on this feature to assist students in their learning.
Why do you think this app could be important to the working lives of music educators?
Muzikboxx helps streamline the typical business processes for studio-based music teachers. From finding and onboarding students to then managing their studios, this app reduces the need for additional applications, and also saves time by reducing the administrative tasks to less than two hours a week [as estimated] for those teachers who have to manage many students.
Muzikboxx (pictured below) also helps teachers to focus on their teaching business by having everything in the one place.
Monica, thanks for chatting with us about Muzikboxx. You’re also working on a PhD in music and computer science, so I’d be interested to know how you feel about the future of technology in the music education sphere.
Technology is unavoidable. There is so much that technology can do to assist teachers deliver better lessons, assist students with their practice, and assist music learners who normally would not be able to access music education. I can foresee AI and machine learning becoming a big part of the music education sphere, from helping students find the best time to practice to helping younger students develop self-regulated learning skills to be able to practice on their own, to helping teachers adjust to different learner styles and abilities, to assisting teachers in better understanding the underlying challenges behind student practice.
There are many teachers out there who fear technology as they believe it will be the end of their careers. There’s been no evidence to suggest that technology is anywhere near ready to do that.
On the other hand, there are those teachers that embrace technology and utilise it in their everyday teaching practices, particularly to help students self-reflect on their learning and become more self-aware as musicians.
Before we go, what advice would you give to a teacher thinking about trying out Muzikboxx?
My advice to anyone trying Muzikboxx is to keep an open mind about technology.
Try it out. Share Muzikboxx with other colleagues, students, and friends. As any new website or application, it does take a few months to get use to the interface and integrate it into everyday practice.
We are also very open to suggestions for future features, and aim to grow Muzikboxx into something that can be used by all music teachers no matter how small or large their studios are.
Visit the Muzikboxx website to explore the functions for music teachers and students.
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