MuseSpring Launches Online Music Industry Education Center

MuseSpring is a newly launched online course system for the music industry designed as a continuing ed-style subscription service. The concept definitely has some potential but MuseSpring also has a few challenges ahead based on this early version.

Founder JD Carr shared his thoughts this week on MuseSpring and where they want to go with their service that launched on Monday. MuseSpring is being developed in relationship to SongBliss, a music discovery network, that provided some of the inspiration for MuseSpring.

The core idea is to offer basic music industry education for the indie artist at a reasonable price in an on-demand setting. Courses are designed to address basic issues such as copyright as well as use of major webtools for the music industry with new material appearing regularly. Advanced courses featuring videos of established professionals are planned for January and additional services are being developed.

Whatever the size of the market, the basic idea of targeted education is sound and the desire to develop proprietary course materials makes sense as well. However, MuseSpring's web presence doesn't clearly establish its credentials. One can make the connection to the SongBliss Team but it's a little unclear at the MuseSpring site how courses are validated and some transparency might help customers.

Carr revealed that they are originating the initial courses in-house and basically having the materials reviewed by outside professionals as needed. The advanced course videos will also be done with active industry pros. I think finding ways to feature such individuals would actually be extremely helpful in establishing the legitimacy of MuseSpring's offerings in the eyes of web visitors.

Though I'm also a fan of not overdoing design elements, I also find the site a bit muted. Even education sites are expected to have some sense of flair to entice browsers.

MuseSpring may be off to a barebones start but that's not a bad thing. However, presenting their offering in a convincing manner will be as important as the quality of the content itself for longterm success.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He is currently relaunching Flux Research to pursue his long-standing obsession with web business models. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.