Greetings, beloved Music Factory students and families!

We are now filling up openings for our usual September rush, and we are excited to share the gifts of music with the community! In line with the general return of in-person activities throughout the region, we are delighted to be approaching September with a full roster of vaccinated teachers who are ready to work with you (or your child) in person at our Madison Valley facility. 

As we continue this process of returning to “normal”, do know that each of our teachers are glad to accommodate any special considerations in relation to your lessons, we are open for in person lessons. It has been wonderful to see the smiles returning to the building. We will continue to offer online lessons,  you can keep lessons online until you’re not ready, or as long as you wish. Your times will stay the same, talk to your teacher about the details, contact us if you have any questions about in person vs online lessons. 

2022 is just around the corner, and we have lots of plans for improving how we do what we do! We have been working on a new website & have implemented a new client/teacher portal to better manage our organically growing roster, and we’re looking forward to furthering & perfecting these changes in 2021-2022. Our goal is to continue providing the highest quality music education in Seattle (or anywhere), Our focus is on meeting each student where they are building meaningful mentorships & providing the opportunity to work with amazing top-of-the-line musicians who teach valuable life lessons along with every note. 

In response to these new elements (along with general overhead), we wanted to take a few moments to remind everyone that the second phase of our two-part 2021 lesson rate adjustment plan (as originally announced early this year) is approaching. Our teachers are getting a raise!In addition, recent upgrades & developments in our internal backend have made it necessary to make some significant adjustments to our policies & guidelines, as described below. 

Effective September 1st 2021, The Music Factory’s weekly lesson rates will run as follows:

• 30 Minutes – $45.00 Per Lesson
• 45 Minutes – $60.00 Per Lesson 
• 60 Minutes – $75.00 Per Lesson

*the new rates of approximately $2.50 per half will result directly in a teacher raise to help  with inflation

Effective September 1st 2021, The Music Factory will also be implementing the following adjustments to our policies & guidelines:

• Due to enormous market demand for our teachers’ weekly lesson appointments, and our commitment to pay our teachers a fair living wage, The Music Factory is shifting to a model where we  no longer offer the option as a policy to selectively subtract the lesson fees for specific dates of student absence in an upcoming month. This won’t affect individual teachers’ policies with regard to rescheduled/makeup lessons. 90% of our students already follow this plan so this should be no change for the majority of you. 
• Due to recent upgrades in our scheduling/billing protocols, and to valuing our teachers time and commitment, The Music Factory will be shifting and phasing out manual monthly payments in favor of our automatic billing plans. 90% of our clients are already in our new system, and the gradual evolution and efficiency of our auto payment/subscription system has been dialed in just right. This is to allow The Music Factory to ensure livable wages to our staff, and to negate the need to ‘track down payments’ or to reconcile late payments. This will affect teacher pay checks for the positive. If there is a reason why you feel you must continue with one of these methods (payments via check, cash, PayPal account) please talk to us.  If your lesson payments have previously been issued in this manner, our staff will be happy to work with you in establishing an account for our standard monthly subscription billing plan. 
• Student participation fees will be shifting to auto pay. For our seasonal recital programs & will be processed on our clients’ subscription billing accounts moving forward, with the presence of a student’s name on our officially announced recital roster being recognized by our staff as authorization to process these fees ($20 per recital, as of September 1st 2021, but this rate is subject to change) on that specific student’s account. We thank our students that have been donating to recitals, but the percent of donations has just not enough to cover the production expenses.

We deeply appreciate your understanding as we adjust to these transitions, for most you our clients these updates will not affect you at all, and we always welcome your questions & concerns on these topics & all others! 

As we continue on our mission to share the gift of music education, we would be enormously grateful if you could take a moment to follow/like/add us on your social media feeds. We are regularly posting fun quotes about music, achievements of our students/staff & updates about our growth as an educational institution!  We truly love our community of students and teachers and deeply believe in the incredible value of music education. 

https://www.facebook.com/musicfactorynw

https://www.instagram.com/musicfactorynw

If your life (or your child’s) has been meaningfully impacted by The Music Factory, do know that we always appreciate a positive review on Yelp, Google & our social media outlets!

We look forward to making music with you in 2021 and beyond! Please stay tuned for news about our next student recital (hopefully being conducted IN PERSON at an amazing Seattle music venue near you circa October 2021!) and other exciting new programs over the next few months, and please always feel welcome to check in with us along the way!

The Music Factory

-The Music Factory 

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