Tony Wacheski of Anytune

As a young student, I played many instruments and would have loved an app like this! I can see how this would help users learn to play music by ear. Allowing young students to play their own music too would be very motivating, as there was nothing more demotivating in band than playing the same old, boring songs over and over again. While there is a place for perfecting certain songs, balancing new popular music with learning old standards keeps students interested longer. While I think the business model is quite unique in that they decided to focus this technology as an educational app, it seems like there is a missing piece to the puzzle in terms of evaluating the entrepreneurial merit. For example, utlimately this is a music app, but neither the engineer nor the founder seem to have a music background.

I think this app is really cool. As a non-music teacher I have always wanted to learn how to play the piano. After trying to teach myself by listening to youtube videos and stopping and starting I think this app would be really beneficial. I also suspect teachers would love to use this app. This could definitely assist students with practicing their instruments at home or pieces of music they need to play back.

************ INTRO: Since this product seems well established after 7+ years of development and has achieved a decent degree of success in Apple’s App Store, let me focus on what’s working and possible ways to grow the venture…As I mentioned about Parlay in another post, here we have an example of how a business can gain traction even if it doesn't have all the recommended resources (e.g. Advisory Board) or follow all the established entrepreneurial 'best practices' as a startup (e.g. participation in an incubator program, clearly presenting the product’s value proposition relative to competitors). ******************* WHAT’S WORKING: Some great approaches Tony is using that I think are contributing to his success are featured on his website: 1) using a ‘feemium’ model helps generate downloads, exposure and user feedback; 2) featuring a famous user testimonial on the home page and then non-famous user profiles on a separate ‘Featured Artists’ page garners instant association with success for the app and makes it relatable as a tool used by ‘regular musicians’; 3) highlighting the large number and quality of public ratings and the app’s awards on the Home page fosters instant respect and confidence in the app’s quality; 4) the ‘Compare Features’ page clearly differentiates the three versions of the app in a graphic way while also explaining the features; 5) the users guides and video tutorials are very helpful and promote initial uptake; 6) in the ‘Partners’ area of the site, the crowd-sourced list of schools using the app promotes the growth of a user community that can promote and enrich the use of the app. **************** SUGGESTED IMPROVEMENTS: 1) I think making the ‘free to teachers’ aspect more obvious on the site would generate faster and more adoption among music teachers (currently this fact is buried on a ‘Partners’ page and on a ‘Teachers’ page, both of which are only navigable via tiny, one word text links in the page footer with the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy links); 2) I recommend removing the ‘News’ page since it’s not being updated, contains no unique content and may therefore give the impression that the app is no longer current or that development has stopped.

I find the marketing approach really smart. The app. can be used by a continuum of players, from beginners to the more experienced player looking to transcribe songs for example.The pain point this venture is addressing is real and it seems like the app. does indeed resolve the problem by saving users lot of time.