Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Is teaching piano viable as a sole income for an individual?

This is all looking pretty positive to me!

I've spoken to some of my Uni friends who happen to be teaching at the moment, and they're doing quite well for themselves, especially considering they're only working one day per week.



I'm so happy you brought up this point. There's an online directory of teachers I look up from time to time. Close to the city where I'm studying, there are heaps of teachers, probably over a hundred. Over at my old hometown, there was one or two, and where my mum's now moved (and where my private teaching should be starting up), there's only one teacher a 10-15 minute drive away. The new place is just twenty minutes north of my old town. So I'm hoping that will spell out good things for me.

We wish you luck, and keep us posted.

I'm curious: for the one student you have now, what percentage of his or her tuition goes to you and what percentage goes to the "school via a contracting company"? (That's a pretty clumsy phrase, by the way - I don't really know what it means.)

But we have had many discussions here about the merits of teaching on own's own or through a music school, and our discussions were only about the US, so it would be nice to learn about your situation in Australia.

Sounds promising! Do keep us posted.

In answer to the OPs original question: Yes. Piano teaching is a viable occupation.

The details will vary depending on your location, and maybe more importantly your personality. You need a wide range of skills... beyond your music and teaching skills.

Is it a fit for your personality and skill set? We can't know that because we don't know you, but plenty of people with a wide range of personalities have success at the career.

I just accepted a transfer student who had been studying with a teacher for 2 years and didn't know her finger numbers, what any clef was, didn't know any types of notes (quarter notes etc.) and of course no letter names. 2 years!

There are shocking levels of incompetence out there.

Why did I accept the student? Because she's bright and has potential. But it's starting from the very beginning.

Welcome to my world!

I've been carping about BAD TEACHERS for the last several years. I've even started a thread on that very topic. The level of incompetence is sickening.

(It means the woman who pays me has contact with schools, and can get me into schools to teach. The parents pay her, and she pays me.)

I don't know what the percentage is, but I only get $16 for the lesson. She pays me an extra $16 for petrol cost, but if I get a second student, that won't increase my pay.

It's not an awful thing -- it's given me a year's worth of experience and some extra money -- but there's a big difference between $16 and the $25 I can get in my own studio.

However, in the future I'd consider going through a company for in-school teaching, then at night time doing my private teaching. That's if I can't get into the schools myself.

whatever, I agree

I think somehow I was avoiding seeing it for a long time - and probably many other teachers have done the same thing. If you're set up in a community where people know you, often we mainly start students from the beginning or accept transfers from a student who moved and wants to stay in CM.

Maechre, I hesitated to answer assuming that you, like many posters here, were American... if you were located in America then I wouldn't know much about teaching, income and all the things that go with that. I am in Sydney... and I hope to move to Melbourne eventually, but I can tell you, I'm in my fourth year of my Bachelor of Music degree at the con, I work less than some of my friends in other fields but I earn a lot more in terms of my hourly rate.

I don't want to purely only teach piano though, I do intend to start following my other dreams (in the hospitality industry) by getting an apprenticeship in commercial cookery (chef studies).

If you want more students, there are a few ways around it: 1. Advertise 2. Join an already established music studio... but I just really wanted to say that there is a lot of flexibility in music. If you can't see yourself doing studio teaching all the time, then working in schools, getting involved with Kindermusik programmes (there is another one in Australia called Jellybeans music). Otherwise accompanying for AMEB and university entrance exams (they call it the HSC in Sydney, I know it's different in Melbourne) makes good money.

I'm in my fourth year... so all of the issues that revolve around employment are quite real but so far the universe has been nice to me... In the space of six months, I have gained 11 new piano students. I have also found work in the hospitality industry (I need to be in the kitchen as much as I need to make music!) so I am satisfied.

If you really don't like teaching music, you can always get into something else and do music after hours. There is totally nothing wrong with that.

Maechre - I just wanted to add, if you can start working for yourself and not being part of a studio - DO IT NOW. Ever since I opened the doors to my own studio, I was doing so well financially and I was no longer stressed about parents, students and my boss. If parents were being totally unreasonable or if students really didn't want to be there I now have the luxury of dropping them or telling them politely that 'this probably won't work for you' or that 'I might not be the right teacher for what you want.' I was being abused and exploited when I worked for a studio and I am so glad that I am out. I know that my experience was a total nightmare but it is very, very satisfying to not have a boss whose best interest is in making money and nothing more! It is also very satisfying to be paid a decent amount of money as I don't have to worry about whether or not I could buy simple things like food and coffee!

Thanks so much for your comments, Rebecca. I'm happy it worked out so well for you! Maybe the same can happen for me. 11 students is awesome, and it can grow from there, but you also have the option of limiting your intake of students.

I really do love teaching piano. I hope I feel the same way when I strike out on my own. I've been making my own steps towards going it alone. Apart from having collected the first method books, I now have a Facebook page, and today I finally took the plunge, sharing it on the FB group of the last musical I did (I was onstage ensemble) - there were a lot of kids and parents involved. The next step will be inviting all my FB friends, and also sharing it on two FB groups specific to the town my private studio's in. I can also post info in the newsletter of my old school, but I don't doubt I'll have at least one one student by then.

Thanks for the Kindermusik idea! I'll have to look into it a lot more, but kids are awesome and it sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

(By the way, would you happen to know Saskia Kusrahadianti at the University of Sydney? She may be in the year below - I met her on Youtube.)

+1

Kindermusik is worldwide? I didn't know that.
One "bonus" of programs like Kindermusik: it can act as a recruitment program for your regular private lessons.

Maechre, don't know her, but then again I am at the Sydney con for most of the time (I hardly go to Sydney Uni Campus).

I'll be very honest with you though - facebook isn't great for reeling students in. It's a great way to supplement your income and cater to your 'warm market' read the blog article for more information on that: http://www.composecreate.com/marketing-piano-lessons-101/
I have found that the best way to get students if you cannot go by word of mouth (like myself, I started from scratch) is through the internet. Make sure you have a web presence, a presentable looking website and social media to complement that. I have found 11 steady students through the internet. I also keep a blog, it started out as a way to answer many of the questions that parents and adult students had. I do like writing as well, my major is in musicology so writing on a regular basis comes very naturally. I do have friends who don't understand how I manage to generate over forty thousand words on teaching, since most of them communicate it by means of speech... so blogging might not be for you, but if you like writing, it's a great way to voice some of your views on teaching and it's a good way to develop your web presence too.

Here are some other music related jobs you can fall into after university:

1. Arts Administration
2. Post-grad studies (not a job, but an option)
3. Teaching in high schools or primary schools
4. Teaching Kindermusik, OR being on Orff/Kodaly trained teacher
5. Getting into school enrichment programs (those cool inspirational people who visit your high school are normally funded by Musica Viva or Opera Australia OR some wealthy philanthropist)
6. Accompanying for recitals, AMEB exams, contemporary music recording session work
7. Weddings (it doesn't really work with pianists, but some groups have a pianist on reserve just in case the venue contains a piano that works)
8. Jazz piano cocktail gigs/cruise ships(again, I take it that you probably aren't a jazz pianist but if you do a few jazz courses and fall in love with the genre and learn to improvise in way that makes you suitable for the gig then go right ahead!)
9. Nursing home concerts (quite a number of them pay for their entertainment)
10. Music Therapy (you do need to do a post grad degree for that though)

I could keep going ... but you get the drift, lots of stuff out there, world is your oyster. Just don't be too fussy, don't decide that you will only accept gigs that pay less than $20k and you'll be fine

Interesting. Several of my colleagues who have websites tell me that such web presence is not worth keeping. A couple of them haven't bothered to update theirs in over a year.

I used to have two websites, but since I haven't gotten any inquiries from them, one got cancelled. In my remaining website, it has a tracker that counts the number of visitors. The site had a grand total of 4 visitors in the past year. And it is on the first page of Google if you type in my city plus "piano lesson" or "piano teacher."

So much for web presence.

Hmmm. Well, I'll definitely be keeping the Facebook page, and I'll definitely be using the Facebook commmunity pages as well as local school newsletters to see if I can get any students that way. I've also discovered another piano teacher in my area who started earlier in the year -- I'm thinking it'll be worth getting in touch with the local teachers so I can refer students beyond my teaching to them, as well as students younger than I'm comfortable teaching for now. (This other teacher's scooped up the four-year-old whose mother was looking -- not that I would have been ready to teach him anyway.) And maybe possibly they'd refer me back, I don't know. This isn't my forte (lol), I just have ideas I feel should work.

I'm not a member of MTNA, but was browsing through the program going on this week. I saw there was a talk by someone telling how she earned $100,000 during her first year as a piano teacher. I guess many would like to know.

Ms Kristin K. Yost is her name

Indeed. There is always something to learn from successful people.

On the other hand, an outlier may not tell us much that is replicable for most people. One should always take someone else's "follow my example" claims with a dose of healthy skepticism … especially if speaking fees are part of the income stream.