An excerpt from my conversation with Dr. Quentin Angus.
I know you very recently acquired Til. Is there anything you want to share about that? What were the decisions that led to it?
Til is a fantastic marketplace for one-on-one online music instruction. Many of our peers — and some of my favorite guitar players — teach on Til, and I've been aware of them for a while. They started during the pandemic when people were learning a lot at home as a substitute for in-person lessons.
For us, there's a lot of synergy because the Pickup Music approach is long-form asynchronous learning — large courses that take months to progress through. We do have a live component through group lessons and feedback videos, but real-time instruction is a crucial piece of helping people develop, and Til does that really well.
Rather than building that from scratch ourselves, we thought we'd work with Til and find ways to integrate it into our membership to complement what we already do — giving students the best of both worlds: learn at your own pace, but also, when you want, book a session with someone like Molly Miller for that individual lesson.
The announcement
Pickup Music has acquired Til.co, a marketplace for live online music lessons.
This acquisition expands Pickup Music's offering to include private and small-group lessons alongside our on-demand courses, which will help members progress faster through direct feedback from experienced instructors.
For Til, the acquisition brings increased demand from Pickup Music's growing member base and will support its expansion beyond guitar into bass, piano, and additional instruments over time.
Til will continue operating at til.co for now. Over time, we plan to integrate the two platforms to create a seamless experience between courses and live lessons.
Both companies share the same mission: giving people access to the best music lessons and teachers in the world.
Sam Blakelock & Cam Nolan, Co-founders of Pickup Music: "Til has built an exceptional platform and instructor network. Bringing it into Pickup Music allows us to scale high-quality live instruction."
Matthew Rudin, Founder of Til: "I'm proud of what Til has become and confident Pickup Music is the right home for the platform and its instructors."
Originally announced on LinkedIn.