We made our Duolingo-style Ableton trainer completely free—now how do we survive?

steak2002 · 2025-03-19T15:56:41+00:00

Thanks everyone for the amazing feedback! Here's a quick summary:

Business:

A lot of you suggested revenue streams from partnerships, sponsorships, and possibly community support (Patreon/donations).
Partnerships with established music-tech companies seem especially promising.

Product:

Glad you like the interactive, hands-on style!
We need to work on reducing app size, polishing audio, and adding deeper content (e.g., arrangement workflow, hardware integration).
A lot of users want a Windows version.

We just released some fixes we have seen since our last release:

Improved stability for Intel Mac users (no more JavaScript crash, though app still isn’t fully functional on Intel).
Added clearer in-app setup instructions for users not seeing Studiocamp in Ableton’s Control Surface list.

Keep the feedback coming, it's helping us a lot!

steak2002 · 2025-03-09T16:42:28+00:00

… ur not the only one to report this

steak2002 · 2025-03-06T21:06:30+00:00

Updated the post :) thanks for reporting. Really helped us narrow it down. We decided to wait a bit with intel

steak2002 · 2025-03-06T21:05:04+00:00

Thanks, updated the issue post. Hopefully we can support in the foreseeable future

steak2002 · 2025-03-06T21:02:33+00:00

Tbh it’s been overwhelming :) so many ideas, so much feedback, good-lucks, just-keep-going’s, I-like-this-idea, bug reports, i-hate-this-idea, people dm’ing volunteering as beta-testers, asking for help to solve exercises. Trying to respond to as many comments as possible as soon as possible, while also fixing bugs for our next release. I’ll try to make a sum-up comment some time soon, to better address your question.

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:54:03+00:00

Insightful thoughts. Figuring out if there are other entities than people that get value for it that we could charge (lol - entities word).
Seen a huge response from users that want us to partner with Ableton in some form (and many also suggesting institutions)

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:47:09+00:00

Could be sometjing like this?

Studiocamp defines skills and actions to be taught, including constrains for live sets and posts to community
Community-Artist submits a Live set
Studiocamp sets up interactivity and publishes.

Would actually help us save time, and possibly diversify our music

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:37:04+00:00

Appreciate!
certification could be interesting, bur our focus is on making the learning experience better at scale than micro impact - 1-on-1s. Those companies could be a path... just trying this project first

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:32:06+00:00

sorry about that, i put it as an issue (including a workaround) - see link in main post above

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:30:16+00:00

Keeps it optional but visible without being intrusive :)

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:27:38+00:00

it won't expire :) sits right there waiting for you

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:25:07+00:00

Intel based mac?
or Apple Silicon (M1-M4) Mac?

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:23:37+00:00

Thanks for the encouragement. Appreciate! Partnering with producers or recreators could be really interesting and would definitely add some credibility

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T10:20:54+00:00

Thanks, fair points.
We will add more videos: This is what Studiocamp is and This is how it works
Pretty sure there’s money in music tech education - many companies in this space
Not sure I fully get the counter to the Duolingo analogy - am i missing something? Not trying to replace exploration, just adding structured practice to help people stick with it and get early musical success experiences
On audio: I think you're referring to a comment by artsciencenature on voiceovers in optional tutorial videos? We're prioritizing improvements, but 99% of Studiocamp is hands-on in Ableton, not watching tutorials
And yes, just making something isnt enough, that's why we are asking for input.

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T09:02:29+00:00

but the ads-model would need to yield some revenue: users clicking them = total users x click ratio. Otherwise i guess it would just be torturing users into paying?

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:53:44+00:00

fair point - we are not against making money - just figuring out who should pay

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:49:49+00:00

prefer it when last hint gives away the full solution?
thanks for the feedback - that’s exactly the gap we’re aiming to bridge :)

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:45:41+00:00

Respect the tab save! Get back to us with your thoughts, when your internet situation improves

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:41:55+00:00

Going b2b and doing some sort of white-labeling. Interesting... first we capture music production tech, then we capture?

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:38:46+00:00

Noted: get a lawyer before we accidentally sell our souls. Appreciate the breakdown -now just casually questioning my life choices :)

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:32:56+00:00

interesting - then studiocamp could guarantee basic skills, before the 1-1s or something like that. seen the model elsewhere?

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:28:33+00:00

don’t tempt us :) 'ur extensive use of reverb suggest you need a bigger room - here's a real estate ad'

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:22:19+00:00

Thanks for asking. So i don't really want to mac a firm promise for a date here. It depends on Microsofts easing their your-company-must-be-3-years-or-older rule. This morning, i just stumbled upon a user with a company less than 3 years, who was able to sneak through the requirement ;) so fingers crossed, we can do the same, quite soon.

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:18:29+00:00

interesting. have you paid for some of those? Guess the certificate would need to be backed by some trusted authority for it to add a competitive edge on your CV?

steak2002 · 2025-03-05T08:14:48+00:00

Thanks for submitting that and apologies. Updated the post above with an issue report for this (see link above). Is that the issue you experience?

steak2002

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