Studio Launches Online Music School with AI-Powered Customized Courses

Studio, a competitor of MasterClass, has launched its first AI-driven online music school, offering musicians, songwriters, and producers the opportunity to learn from top industry artists, create new songs, receive feedback from like-minded peers, and utilize Studio's AI coach to ensure continuous progress through personalized schedules and deadlines.

The waitlist is now officially open. Studio offers two pricing options: $199 per month or $1,799 per year.

Studio's music school offers thousands of exclusive courses taught by over 110 popular artists and instructors, including Charlie Puth, Kygo, H.E.R., Idina Menzel, Pentatonix, Ryan Tedder (lead singer of OneRepublic), Alexander 23, Tainy, Chelsea Cutler, Jonas Blue, Shane McAnally, and Louis Bell.

There are over 100 topics to choose from, such as vocal production, songwriting, music business, sound design, music theory, cover songs and musicals, as well as genres like alternative, classical, country, EDM, folk, hip-hop, indie pop, lo-fi, metal, and R&B.

The online accelerator features an AI coach that utilizes OpenAI's GPT-4 to provide personalized courses based on students' interests, specific goals, learning styles, and experience levels. It can also design courses based on students' specific schedules and commitment levels, so if they have vacations, the AI coach will adjust accordingly to ensure they continue to make progress. Students can input the fixed number of hours they are ready to dedicate to the courses.

Subsequently, students will be assigned customized projects and are expected to complete at least one publishable song by the end of the month.

In addition to GPT-4, the AI coach is supported by two proprietary frameworks that address the main limitations of "out-of-the-box" GPT-4 in terms of educational design: long-term planning, progress, sequencing, and effective personalization, as explained by co-founder Max Deutsch to TechCrunch. "GPT-4 particularly struggles in the educational design of creative fields like music because there is no single 'correct answer' for each step of the process."

These frameworks leverage thousands of hours of video courses, expert knowledge from the course design team, and years of outcome-based student data at Studio to determine which courses, projects, and peer matches work best for different types of learners.

"The combination of GPT-4 and these frameworks allows us to build efficient, fast-paced, logically sequenced, and correctly personalized courses for students, and update these plans proactively and effectively as students progress, to ensure they always stay on the right track and motivated," added Deutsch.

Lastly, there is an algorithm that matches students with a peer group of 20 individuals with similar preferences, so they can receive feedback from people who have knowledge in the same topics on a weekly basis.

It is worth noting that Studio's music school is not designed specifically for beginners looking to start a career in the music industry, but rather for creative individuals who already have a basic understanding and wish to enhance their skills. No equipment is required to participate in the courses, but Studio states that most people already have some music software or digital audio workstation (DAW) and a microphone for recording music.

Deutsch mentioned that later this year, the online course platform will launch more AI-driven schools focusing on various fields such as writing, filmmaking, and design.

Studio was initially founded in 2017 with the aim of catering to creative individuals and filling the gap in creative learning fields that are often overlooked, such as music, performing arts, and baking. The company now offers courses to over 1 million students.

So far, Studio has raised $60 million from numerous investors, including Forerunner Ventures, Human Capital, Greenoaks Capital, Floodgate, Jeffrey Katzenberg's WndrCo, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, LinkedIn Chairman Jeff Weiner, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, StitchFix founder Katrina Lake, Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman, Intuit founder Scott Cook, and Zillow founder Spencer Rascoff.