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Seems like there’s an app for everything, nowadays.
Need a menu at a restaurant? Download our app. Need to pay a bill? Download our app. Need to consolidate your apps? There’s an app for that!
(I kid, but only partially.) It’s annoying! We have taken what was intended to make our lives easier and come full circle, making it just add more we need to organize. Add to that all of the promises each one makes for a business we may be running (looking at you, private music teachers), and it’s all a lot of pressure.
However, with some clarity on the users end, we can turn apps back to what they were intended to be: helpful little programs that do make our lives easier. Lucky for you, we did a lot of the heavy lifting and found (what I consider to be) the best apps for music teachers. You’re welcome!
Again, I kid, but only partially.
Like I’ve talked about before, most of my teaching and business knowledge came from trial and error; I tried things out and learned what doesn’t actually work for what I need, and kept pivoting. In that, I have naturally cycled through lots of apps for different aspects of my business, and found which are the best, at least for my particular music teacher business.
And, of course, I want to share them with you, so you can start further along than I did!
My 5 favorite apps for music teachers:
SquareUp
It’s no secret that I love Square for my music business – I’ve written about it a lot. And no, I don’t mean the website builder, though they do have that service. I mean the scheduling, invoicing, contract-tracking, marketing, communications platform that made the admin side of my business so stinkin’ easy. So this is my absolute, hands-down, one of the best apps for music teachers, especially private teachers.
I think many times, if a program is originally created to be used on desktop, the app version is lackluster or less. However, the square apps are ridiculously easy to use! The interface is intuitive, functionality equals that of the desktop version, and yes, I said apps – as in multiple! Depending on what you need for your business, you can use their different apps with different focuses (for example, I used their appointments app for my music lessons – it lets you schedule, manage contracts, and even send invoices, but the focus of the app itself is the appointments).
Tomplay
I have found Tomplay to be one of the unsung heroes among the best apps for music teachers. I used to love Scribd (now Everand), but since they’ve bowed out of the sheet music arena, they’ve left a lot of musicians and music teachers – including myself – high and dry in terms of a digital subscription library.
Then, by no accident, I discovered Tomplay.
They are a subscription library, cheaper than Scribd ($10 a month, billed annually), with a huge selection of over 90,000 interactive scores.
Yes, that’s right. A huge digital library of scores in every genre, for almost ever instrument, with professional backing tracks, visual aids, note-taking ability, adjustable tempo settings, the ability to isolate and practice sections… I could go on.
But I won’t. They have a 14-day free trial of their premium plan – check it out for yourself!
Keeper Taxes
Taxes are, hands down, the worst part of being a private music teacher – especially in the US. The system is so complicated that keeping track of what you can write off and what you can’t is a full time job in and of itself.
I have a whole post on tax write offs, with a list of tips and things to keep an eye on. Of course, I’m not a tax professional (we absolutely hire one every year at tax time. Not cheap, but worth it!), but I have been around the block a few times and know a little bit. To sum up what I know: for sole-prop (self-employed) tax entities, the write offs are a game changer. You can check out my other post for some surprising write-offs!
But again, tracking them – keeping (the right) receipts, tallying them at the end of the fiscal year, and storing them all for the recommended time period – is a full-time job. That’s why Keeper is on my list of best apps for music teachers!
Yes, they can help you file your taxes (for MUCH cheaper than an accountant), and yes, they specialize in “complex” tax filings (like self-employed), but here’s the best part: you can link your bank account and their program will find deductions for you. It’s so great. It automates that full-time job – lowering stress and buying back time!
Try it out here and see what deductions are hiding in your spending this year!
Canva
I’m no graphic designer. And if I had to guess, since you landed on a blog post titled “the Best Apps for Music teachers,” you aren’t either.
And yet, whether you are promoting your own private music teacher services, creating resources for your classroom, or making flyers for events, some graphic design is often just a part of the job. Yet another help for doing our job well is to have well-designed graphics, handouts, or flyers.
A good graphic designer is not cheap, either (as they should be – charge your worth!), so that puts people like you and me in a pickle, especially when we are just starting out with little cash flow.
Canva is an easy-to-use online graphic design platform with a huge design library of photos, fonts, graphics, and – for the exceptionally busy – templates! They have pre-designed templates for all sorts of media that make design ridiculously easy; just change the text and download! I have used Canva for all of my C&S Music designs, and have convinced many other projects I am a part of to do the same. It makes my life so much easier.
They have a free version as well as a paid “pro” version – both are good, but you get access to an even bigger library with pro. Try it out!
For Mac users: SetApp
This one is for my Mac music teachers (like myself) – SetApp is a very cool “app subscription” service that I have found to be particularly helpful in the productivity arena. So, for productivity, it is a fantastic option among apps for music teachers – to find what works best for you and your business!
Each one of our brains works differently, and responds well to different systems. Because we are all so unique, it can be really hard to take others’ advice when it comes to productivity systems, and it can take forever to nail down something that works for you.
With SetApp, you get access to a library of hundreds of top-performing apps in the Mac store for just $10 a month, so you can try out apps to your hearts content, until you find ones that really work for you! Like I said, I have found it to be particularly helpful for productivity apps, but they have so many others to try out! Check out their full catalogue here.
Those, my friends, are what I have found to be the best apps for music teachers.
Like I said at the top, I know that the amount of resources out there for music teachers (both good and bad) can be overwhelming and a little… too much. And when I encounter too much of something, my first instinct is to cut it out, shut it down completely. However, I’ve lost out on a lot of really great things with that philosophy! The antidote to excess is often not full deletion, but moderation and what is best – these apps are what have fit that for my business, and I hope they help you as well.
If you have an app you think should be on this list, let me know! I’d be happy to try them out and see if they pass my test. You can leave a comment or shoot me an email.
