This is my project idea for the Coursera Startup Engineering class. It's basically going to be "Khan Academy" for piano lessons... nugget-sized videos to teach people everything about playing piano.
The site doesn't actually have any real content yet. So it's super duper barely MVP. :-)
Still, I welcome your feedback and questions!
I was trying to meet the deadline for the Coursera course :-). All they required is a landing page with donation and tweet buttons, so that's all I did for now.
But now that I know there is some interest, I'll get to work building some real content!
If you use tumblr, you can follow my blog in the upper right corner: http://blog.pianouniversity.com/
Thanks!
Thanks for the signup idea. I assume you mean a way to gather users' emails? I signed up for MailChimp, but they require a physical address to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. I'm not sure I want to show off my apartment's address to the world, so I might have to buy a P.O. Box first before I do email signups.
For now, if you like social networks, you can get updates from here:
https://www.facebook.com/PianoUniversity
https://twitter.com/pianouniversity
https://plus.google.com/b/109787527146738155349/
If you have a Mac, I recommend the free lessons that come with GarageBand. You can also try searching YouTube for piano lessons. For easy sheet music, I like this site: http://makingmusicfun.net/htm/printit_piano_sheet_music_inde...
If you have a MIDI piano, you can try out: http://synthesiagame.com/ Some people really like it.
For example, beginners should definitely know that most western pop/rock music can be played just with C, F, and G major chords. That's something that would have blown my mind when I was a beginner.
And if you throw in an Am, you can play all the songs featured in the Axis of Awesome video:
Like how many camera angles will convey all the nuances of fingering, pedals, "letting the weight of the arms fall on the fingers" etc
The difference is this site will be free. You don't need a Mac with GarageBand and you don't need to pay for premium lessons. I don't expect to get rich off of it, but if I can "break even" by paying off serving costs and the cost to hire anyone to make lessons, then that's all I'm asking for.
I plan to monetize with affiliate links (7% for driving an iTunes sale) and donations. It would be cool to have a companion iPad app. In that case, I could monetize with advertising, and maybe with an inexpensive In-App Purchase for super premium content.
Also, I will follow Khan Academy's model of having super short videos. I think people's attention spans are about 5-10 minutes. So I'll break down material into ~5 minute nuggets.