Tradition runs deep in music education. Students learn from instructors who teach the way they were taught, often relying on methods that may be ineffective or outdated. MuseCool, a UK-based company, is working to disrupt this pattern.
Since its public launch in April, MuseCool has analysed roughly 2,000 music lessons using audio AI technology. The platform goes beyond simple transcription of dialogue between teachers and pupils—it actually comprehends the music being performed. In doing so, the company is constructing a dataset that addresses a gap the music sector has long struggled with: concrete information about what transpires during a music lesson.
Navigating adoption in a conservative field
CEO and co-founder Petru Cotarcea has observed firsthand how the music education world embraces—or resists—new tools. "Music education can be quite conservative. People go to conservatoires to study, and naturally a lot of what you learn relates to how music has historically been taught and played," he explained.
When the startup approached approximately 100 instructors, roughly 40 declined to engage with the platform at all. Some dismissed the offer outright, insisting they already had their own methods. Of the 60 who did participate in testing, 28 became active users—and they brought their entire teaching studios along with them.
Cotarcea has concluded from the beta phase that while adoption in music education presents obstacles, user retention is strong once teachers commit to the system.
Once people become accustomed to a system, they're likely to continue using it for quite a long time. That's where many other apps in our field struggle. You can get amateur musicians to try apps, but it's much harder to get professional musicians and teachers to incorporate apps deeply into education.
Petru Cotarcea
The core technology: understanding music itself
At the heart of MuseCool lies Music Information Retrieval (MIR) technology, which allows the platform to parse and comprehend what occurs musically during a lesson. The company collaborates with Queen Mary University of London on MIR research and is preparing to launch an Innovate UK initiative with the university to advance its engine further.
What sets MuseCool apart from competitors, according to Cotarcea, is its capacity to examine the music itself rather than merely recording and transcribing spoken words. "We listen to the lesson itself and understand what is happening musically. Everything else comes from that," he stated.
Cotarcea referenced a well-funded American competitor that entered the market this summer. Initially, the rival's venture capital backing concerned him, but after testing the product, his perspective shifted. "They can record the speech, generate summaries, and isolate the music so you can play it back. But they don't seem to analyse the music itself. For us, understanding music is fundamental," he noted.
Building a comprehensive teaching platform
Sheet music access represents a significant hurdle for many learners. Since much classical music used in education exists in the public domain, MuseCool assembled a team during the summer, primarily based in Ukraine, to expand its public-domain music collection and convert it into XML format.
The platform currently houses approximately 4,000 piano pieces, with the library expanding rapidly—nearly doubling each month thanks to software improvements and ongoing conversion work. This means parents no longer need to purchase individual sheet music books; the app provides public-domain scores. By year's end, MuseCool intends to introduce licensed music alongside its public-domain offerings.
As the platform's lesson analysis has matured, its summaries have grown increasingly sophisticated. Heat maps enable users to click on specific musical bars to review what the teacher and student discussed and what was happening musically. The company is also tackling a practical problem many tutors face: discussing payment. "We discovered that tutors can find it surprisingly awkward to talk about money. Obviously, it's incredibly important that people actually get paid, so we wanted to make that process easier," Cotarcea explained. Teachers can complete registration in approximately five minutes and manage lesson payments through the platform.
Beyond payments, the platform delivers lesson summaries, encourages student practice, provides sheet music access, and can attract new students to tutors. MuseCool operates on a B2B2C model, with instructors serving as the connection between the company and paying parents and students. With tutors on the platform averaging 14.8 private students, a relatively modest number of teachers can reach hundreds of potential subscribers.
The startup is currently partnering with institutions and student communities at the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, Trinity Laban, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Leeds, and others.
We're particularly interested in reaching conservatoire students because they're generally between 18 and 25, and many of them already teach. They're also younger and more open to technology because they grew up with it. We have the potential to expose MuseCool to around 6,000 musicians across these conservatoires.
Petru Cotarcea
MuseCool has also developed an automated local marketplace feature. Once the platform reaches a critical mass of participating tutors in a given area, it generates a local website where opted-in instructors can be found by parents seeking music lessons. The long-term vision involves scaling these marketplaces across cities and countries, with support for local languages.
Extracting insights from thousands of lessons
Through its operations, MuseCool is gathering a potentially significant asset: data revealing what genuinely happens inside music lessons. Already, the platform is generating unexpected findings. MuseCool's analysis indicates that only around 40 per cent of an average lesson involves actual instrument playing. The remainder consists of explanations, musical discussion, and general conversation—particularly in sessions with younger students.
There is much more happening around the playing.
Petru Cotarcea
Yet the significance of this data extends well beyond tracking how lesson time is allocated. Within conservatoires, music schools, or other formal educational settings, administrators and programme heads could gain real-time visibility into student performance, progress, and lesson attendance. "You don't need somebody to listen to every lesson. You have data points showing what is happening across 600 or 800 students," Cotarcea explained. "If something starts going wrong, the institution can potentially intervene much earlier — before a student gives up or reaches a crisis point. That could help educational institutions keep students learning for longer."
This approach would enable schools to identify problems in real time rather than waiting for end-of-year exam results to reveal issues.
Academic research into teaching methodology represents another application. "I dream of doing so many papers with this data," Cotarcea said. "I go to a lot of teaching events, and so much of what I hear is anecdotal. People tell stories about how they taught something, what they tried, and whether they thought it was successful. There isn't much genuine quantitative data showing what happens inside lessons and what actually works. With enough data, that becomes possible."
Instrument manufacturers constitute yet another potential market. Understanding how an instrument is actually played provides manufacturers with knowledge they currently lack. Music companies could also benefit: with genuine insight into what musicians, students, or children in a particular region are learning, they can identify which music, composers, or artists resonate with those audiences.
The vision: a piano that listens
For Cotarcea, the current capabilities represent merely the starting point. He envisions a talking piano inspired by Beauty and the Beast: "Now imagine that applied to a piano — a talking piano. Maybe that's five or ten years away, or perhaps much sooner."
Technology already exists to track how someone physically presses piano keys and to process speech. MuseCool's contribution would be a layer that comprehends the music in the space and analyses the audio. "What we bring is the layer that understands the music in the room and analyses the audio. Imagine rehearsing with your friends or your band while the piano listens to the room. It understands what is happening, who is playing what, who did what, and who said what," Cotarcea described.
We could collaborate with instrument manufacturers and bring the software directly into the piano. Then the piano effectively comes alive. It understands what is happening in the room, alongside technologies that understand how you physically interact with the instrument and what you say. That's the vision.
Petru Cotarcea
Beyond the app: documentaries and funding
https://www.youtube.com/embed/j0rJUaUNsvc?si=QSVtLlNJrIpjJzq4
MuseCool's ambitions extend beyond its software platform. The documentary The Most Beautiful Noise will premiere on PBS on the US West Coast in two weeks. The film chronicles the conversion of a retired double-decker bus into a mobile music school, reflecting the mission to provide free and accessible music education to every child in London.
The company is simultaneously working to secure its next funding round as it continues expanding the platform. "There are still plenty of hurdles. Music education isn't the sexiest area for investors, so it can be an uphill battle. But we're managing," Cotarcea acknowledged.
From transforming a London bus into a mobile music school to developing AI that could eventually enable a piano to comprehend its surroundings, Cotarcea's core mission has remained constant: to reimagine music education and expand its accessibility.
Source: Tech.eu
