Meet Sam Reti | Founder of Muzie.Live and Music Teacher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sam Reti and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sam, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
The most important factor behind the success of our brand has been our customer service. Our team provides a live chat with real people to assist you at any hour, email, Facebook messenger or connect directly with our live phone support. We also have a variety of support tools and videos to help you integrate Muzie.Live into your school. We are a family owned and operated business driven by music teachers. We want to empower our teachers and their students with the tools they need for high quality music lessons. All of our features are designed from real suggestions from our community of teachers, we can’t wait to hear what they need next!

What should our readers know about your business?
Muzie.Live started in 2019 as an on-demand marketplace. Think Uber for music teachers, you could hop online any time and take incoming lesson requests, get paid by the minute, and work on your own schedule. It sounded great, but when we launched the initial beta in January of 2020, almost every teacher that signed up asked if they could also host their own students. As schools were closing and the pandemic became more serious, teachers needed resources to adapt. We had the technology to host online music lessons and now there was a pressing need and high demand for it but in a different way than we could have ever imagined. In less than two weeks we completely changed our business model. We went from hosting on-demand lessons to building out a dedicated music studio. We didn’t just define high-quality HD audio and video, we went on to create a full suite of tools in and outside the lesson to create engaged students and organized teachers. We wanted to empower music teachers and their students with the right tools for hybrid education because that is who we are, musicians. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing though, our most frequently asked question is, “Are Duets possible?” We know this is what every music teacher misses the most with online lessons. To provide a true duet online, everybody would need to have an internet connection that transfers data instantly. Unfortunately for us, that doesn’t exist yet. With the right internet connection, while wired in, with external microphones, great weather, not too far away and some luck you might get pretty close on most platforms. We believe this ‘pretty close’ experience should not be marketed as being able to provide duets because there will always be some latency and it is inherently unreliable. This has been one of our biggest challenges we have faced as new competitors wanting to profit off of the pandemic started appearing in the market that are willing to provide half-truths and false promises. As a family-owned and operated company that cares about music teachers, we will stay strong and true to our mission and provide transparency to our customers. We strive to solve all the problems music teachers and their students are facing online and in the studio; all in one platform. That is why instead of pretending we can defy psychics, we are excited to have developed and created a solution to duets and internet latency altogether. With one of our features CLIPS, the teacher can record a backing track right there in the lesson creating what we call the first ever, ‘virtual duet’. The student can then play over it as if they were playing a duet with their teacher in real-time. Each tool or feature we build has an entire methodology built behind it. Whether it is to build efficiency in the teachers’ day with built-in automation or create an engaging lesson environment with the interactive two-way whiteboard. We call this the Muzie Methodology and it has changed how thousands of music teachers experience online and hybrid teaching for the better. Muzie.Live has grown from just one teacher outside of Boston, Massachusetts to teachers in over forty countries. From customer support chats at three in the morning, many days on end spent in the office, and never-ending back-to-back demo days. This has been all worth it when I hear teachers are not only able to sustain their businesses online but continuously grow their studios with students in and out of their area. Or even better when I get feedback from students with how much they love their online lessons now. Creating this platform has been the most challenging, rewarding, and most incredible experience of my life. From the Reti Family to all our Muzie Teachers and Students, we promise to continue to build upon our Muzie Methodology to bring you the best and most innovative virtual experience.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
When my Dad visits we love adventuring and exploring in the mountains. Besides working on Muzie.Live we have a full itinerary of adventures including but not limited to: Zip Lining Across the Royal Gorge and grabbing a burger afterwards at Bunkhouse Burgers in Cañon City. Snowboarding down the slopes at Loveland. Carpenter Peak Trail in Roxbourough State Park for sunrise. The Paint Mines Interpretive Park in Calhan. Its the only place in Colorado where the pictures just don’t do it justice! Pikes Peak Highway with a stop at The Chippy for Authentic British Fish n’ Chips & Sausage Butties afterwards. We love to take it to go and eat overlooking Garden of the Gods Park in style! In Denver, we loved visiting the Denver Museum of Nature & Science afterwards catch a bite to eat at the unique food truck dining experience with a view at Advantis. Driving Peak to Peak Highway all the way to Estes Park for a drink at the Stanley Hotel where the Shinning was filmed. We love our long drives, one of our favorites is through Jefferson into south park and through to Breckenridge. This beautiful drive is best completed in Frisco for lunch. I was born in England as well as my dad living in England for most of his life, we love our British Food! In our town of Castle Rock, we recommending visiting Brit Stop Café for the best sausage rolls, savory pies and the Chantilly Lace Cake is to die for. It’s funny how we had to move all the way to Colorado for the best British food in the USA! Locally, we love exploring Phillips Miller Park, Castlewood Canyon State Park and of course climbing to the top of the rock!!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My dad inspired my love of music at a young age from his stories of being a touring drummer in the ’80s around England, opening for some of the legends such as Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. He has been my biggest support throughout my years of diligently practicing the guitar, attending Berklee College of Music, living out my dream as a musician and discovering my passions in music education technology. After my dad’s years as a musician, he began to learn to code as the first wave of personal computers were becoming available. Today, he is an extremely talented and accomplished software developer. Having my dad on the Muzie.Live team is like having a full team of ten developers, if not more. Together we designed and built Muzie.Live from the ground up and are continuously able to continuously create innovative new tools for music lessons.

Website: www.muzie.live

Instagram: instagram.com/muzie.live

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Muzie.Live/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCagoitxpgQar0f5JnUf590g