This calculator vs. My Music Staff

Two different jobs: My Music Staff is a paid subscription that runs a studio's scheduling, billing, and attendance. This page is a free, private calculator for one narrower question — what should the lesson price be, once cancellations, prep, travel, and monthly costs are counted — with nothing to sign up for.

What each tool is for

My Music Staff is a well-known paid subscription platform for independent music teachers and studios, built to run the operational side of teaching: online lesson scheduling, automated billing and payment collection, attendance and makeup-lesson tracking, and parent or student communication, described on its own site. It is the kind of tool a teacher reaches for once they already have a lesson price and need the calendar, invoices, and reminders built around a growing roster of students. My Music Staff's own pricing and plan terms are not repeated here, since this session cannot verify today's figures against its current terms; only its well-documented scope as a studio-management platform is described.

This calculator does none of what a studio-management platform does. It has no scheduling, no billing, no student roster, and no account. It takes the annual pay target, teaching weeks, cancellation rate, prep and travel minutes, and monthly costs a teacher already has in mind, and returns the lesson price needed to hit that target and the real effective hourly rate once the invisible time is counted — instantly, in the browser, with nothing uploaded and nothing to configure first.

Question	Where to answer it
What should I actually charge per lesson to hit my annual income target, once cancellations and unpaid prep time are counted?	This calculator — free, instant, private, no account or student roster needed.
How do I schedule lessons, collect payment automatically, and track attendance across a growing roster of students?	My Music Staff or a comparable studio platform — that ongoing operational workflow is what it is built for.
Is my quoted rate still worth it once driving time and an empty slot after a last-minute cancellation are counted?	This calculator — travel and cancellation fields show the real effective hourly rate directly.
Do I need parent communication, online booking, or recurring invoice reminders for an existing studio?	My Music Staff or a comparable platform — this page remembers nothing about students between visits except what your own browser stores locally.
Do I need an account, a student database, or a payment processor to use the tool?	This calculator: no. My Music Staff's scheduling and billing run inside a configured, ongoing studio account.

Most independent teachers get different value from each: My Music Staff (or a comparable studio platform) for the ongoing scheduling, billing, and communication behind a running roster of students, and a private calculator like this one for setting the lesson price honestly before any of that billing starts. This page's own figures are a pricing worksheet, not a scheduler, a payment processor, or a substitute for the platform you actually run your studio in.

This tool needs no account and no sign-in: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and once it has loaded it keeps working with the connection off.

Common questions

Should I use this calculator or a studio-management platform like My Music Staff?

They answer different questions. My Music Staff is a paid subscription platform built to run an independent music studio's day-to-day operations: online scheduling, automated billing and payment collection, attendance tracking, and parent or student communication, described on its own site. It is the kind of tool a teacher reaches for once they already have a lesson price and need the calendar, invoices, and reminders built around it. This calculator does none of that. It has no scheduling, no billing, no student records, and no account. It answers the narrower question that comes first: from your annual pay target, real teaching weeks, cancellation rate, prep and travel time, and monthly costs, what should the lesson price actually be. Once you have that number, My Music Staff (or a comparable studio platform) is where you might run the calendar and invoicing around it.

Is this page affiliated with My Music Staff?

No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by My Music Staff. My Music Staff is named here only to describe what this calculator is and is not, based on My Music Staff's own public site.

Open the Music Lesson Pricing Calculator to price your own lessons, or see the full pricing guide with a worked example.