We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby…
This past week, the MusicFirst US-based team, alongside the founders of Charanga and Rising Software, gathered in Murfreesboro, Tennessee - right outside of Nashville - for a set of company meetings - our first in-person gathering since we were acquired by Achieve Partners at the end of 2024. At one point during the meetings, I looked out at this incredible group of smart, talented, and passionate musicians and educators and remembered when MusicFirst was only a dream that I had back in 2012. I am both humbled and beaming with pride at the team I’ve assembled and more importantly, what we have created together over the past 13 years.
For the first months of our company history, I sat alone in an office in midtown Manhattan trying to figure out what music educators needed to help them do their jobs in the ever changing landscape of education and technology. I knew that cloud-based software was the future, but that was about it. I scoured the internet for music software that was already online, but I could only find a small handful, including Noteflight and a few others. We acquired a few companies, including Rising Software - the creators of Auralia and Musition, as well as Focus On Sound, O-Generator - now O-GenPlus, Sibelius Groovy, and Morton Subotnik’s Music Academy. I hired Robin Hodson and we began to sell cloud-based software when no one else was. We were definitely disruptors in the well established educational software market - especially in music education - and we definitely upset some folks. A small price to pay for innovating and improving the teaching tools available to music educators.
In late 2012, I hired Bradley Smith to help me bring my designs for a comprehensive music education platform to life - what would become the MusicFirst Classroom. We started designing the platform and working with an incredible development house in NYC - Avatar New York. We launched in August of 2014 and haven’t looked back. Since then we’ve added amazing products like PracticeFirst powered by MatchMySound, Sight Reading Factory, Soundtrap, Flat for Education, and most recently our amazing new spiral curriculum for elementary music, MusicFirst Elementary, which includes some incredible content and software, including our very own DAW created by Charanga called YuStudio. While we’ve had many changes to our offerings and feature set over the past 13 years, I firmly believe that we now have by far the most comprehensive solutions for K-20 music education in the world. We’ve also assembled the best team in the industry - hands down. It’s been an amazing journey and I am really looking forward to the years to come. We have SO many exciting opportunities on the horizon, including brining even more amazing software to our customers, incredible partnerships with some of the most respected organizations in education, and much more.
As we all head home today and get ready for the rest of the 2025-26 school year, I am re-energized, and even more passionate about what we do at MusicFirst. We have an incredible team, incredible products, and now an incredible plan for bringing our solutions to even more music educators, and perhaps most importantly, to their students. Music education matters, and we are so proud to be a part of this amazing industry. Here are some photos that I took during our meetings. We had LOTS of fun while focusing on our strategic roadmap for the years ahead. Onwards!
