Jared Falk started offering video lessons in the early 2000s. Now, more than 100,000 people pay to take his company's music lessons.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Matt Cameron is behind the drum kit in the basement of an industrial building in Abbotsford, B.C., and he’s describing the fine points of his part on Soundgarden’s Rusty Cage. It’s a tricky tune for any drummer – hard-driving, with plenty of stops and starts behind Chris Cornell’s off-kilter vocals, then a cut in tempo as the 1991 grunge anthem comes to a close.
Mr. Cameron had just recreated that performance in a studio run by the online content creator and education platform Drumeo. As he played, several video cameras rolled, zeroing in on the stickwork as well as his bass-drum foot. Now, for a percussion-obsessed audience, he’s getting into what it was like to work with the late singer.
“I think he instinctively trusted my instincts. I was intentionally trying to follow the dynamics of his vocal parts, and a lot of times I would do that with the cymbals or the hi-hat,” he tells Brandon Toews, a young drummer and music school grad who conducts the interview from behind the soundboard. “I feel that the hi-hat is a pretty vital way to match the singer’s dynamic range and intensity.”
Parts of his demo and discussion would soon be edited and slickly packaged, then uploaded to YouTube under the Drumeo banner to take its place among hundreds of others featuring the world’s best-known rock, pop, R&B and jazz drummers.
It’s a roster that includes Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stewart Copeland of The Police, the human machine and internet sensation known as El Estepario Siberiano, and Steve Jordan, veteran session man who stepped in for The Rolling Stones after Charlie Watts died.
In video after video, the drummers demonstrate their signature grooves, put their chops to the test by creating parts for tunes unfamiliar to them, offer exercises to improve technique, and share stories about their work on new and classic tracks. The channel even offers up its digital stage for other YouTube drum teachers.
The clips often rack up views in the millions, helping to draw new students from around the globe to Drumeo’s package of online musical instruction for US$40 a month.
Drumeo is the brainchild of Jared Falk, an Abbotsford-born drum teacher, performer and entrepreneur who sowed the seeds for the business by offering video lessons in the pre-streaming era of the early 2000s.
In the past decade, Mr. Falk’s company – Musora Media Inc. – has expanded with similar offerings for piano, vocals and guitar, and now has more than 100,000 paid subscribers. The 43-year-old and his 130 employees use the latest in digital technology to add new content regularly and keep students logging in.
“Most people only see the YouTube channel and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Like, we have way more stuff below the water level, within the platform,” Mr. Falk says.
Jame and Jared Falk got their starts working at their family’s poultry farm.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Falk’s Musora competes in a crowded online music instruction market currently valued at almost US$2.2-billion, according to Ireland-based Research and Markets, and projected to grow by 17.5 per cent annually over the next five years to almost $5-billion.
There’s no shortage of competition in the field of fee-based online lessons, including MusicGurus, Yousician and Tonara, as well as the online offerings of big U.S. music schools Berklee and Juilliard.
What sets Musora apart, Mr. Falk says, is a laser focus on promoting the culture of music alongside instruction. He says it’s “more church than school.”
“It sounds like pie in the sky, but we aim to help give someone the belief that they can play music. You’ll hear it all the time – people will say, ‘I don’t have rhythm. I could never play an instrument,’ or, ‘I tried once and I failed,’” Mr. Falk said at the building Musora is gradually overtaking. It‘s a bustling two-storey warren of studios, offices, a packed drum storage room and soon, a performance space.
“That’s why we have artists, and we put them through these tests that make them show vulnerability,” he says, explaining that it makes music feel more approachable.
Signed instruments from Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater and Kazz Rodriguez, who plays drums with Josh Groban.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
The business has grown exponentially in size and sophistication since Mr. Falk and co-founder Rick Kettner began offering digitized lessons on the flams and paradiddles of drumming fundamentals in 2003, then became early adopters of the YouTube platform in 2007.
He’s coy about discussing financials, as it is a private company, but will admit to generating revenues in the “mid-eight figures.”
At the heart of the company is a core group of young musicians and teachers, many of whom grew up in and around Abbotsford, about an hour’s drive southeast of Vancouver. Mr. Falk, and his younger brother Jame Falk, a bass player who is Musora’s chief executive officer, got their starts working at Fraser Valley Specialty Poultry, their family’s business.
Today, artists and their managers clamour to get to Abbotsford and secure a spot on the channel, and not much money changes hands, unless they are being brought in for a special project, he says. Their willingness to appear gives Drumeo and its sister divisions a stamp of approval, and affords the performers a new avenue to boost their profile.
That’s not always easy from behind the drum set at the back of the stage.
“There’s a community of drummers, which I’m very happy to be a part of, and Drumeo definitely enhances that community,” Mr. Cameron tells The Globe and Mail after the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, also known for his work with Pearl Jam, winds up his session.
“It just kind of highlights what we do as musicians and artists, and it’s a really nice way to just differentiate what the drummer does. It’s a good illustration of how we work, how we operate and how it fits the music.”
Jared Falk with Matt Cameron, known for his work with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, at the Musora studio.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
And the focus stays on the music, rather than veering off into pop-culture feuds or politics. Just the drums, ma’am.
On the YouTube channel, it’s fascinating to see how a skilled player like Philo Tsoungui, German drummer for The Mars Volta, for instance, creates her own part for a tune by Rush. But this manna for music geeks isn’t how Drumeo derives its revenue. In fact, it is a major expense for what is essentially a tool for attracting the curious – some of whom may decide to take the plunge into seeking the instruction.
“I spend millions of dollars a year just providing videos for free, and a lot of people are like, how do you make money?” Mr. Falk says. The idea is to highlight the value on offer before asking for any money. This strategy dates back to the early YouTube days, when Mr. Falk was the guy on camera providing the instruction.
That began to evolve in 2014, when he started inviting other pro drummers to demonstrate grooves and techniques, starting with Toronto-born Larnell Lewis, who now plays for Snarky Puppy, and veteran Kenny Aronoff. The early foray was part of a partnership with instrument maker Yamaha.
“They saw the value in the content we‘re creating and the awareness that we are building. It’s not like that anymore because now the channel is big enough that we have more people that want to come than we can handle,” Mr. Falk says.
The internet is rife with content for enthusiasts of every imaginable skill, pastime and hobby, from needlepoint to golf to dog grooming to car washing to birding. It’s also packed with free music instruction.
Some of it is well done, offering techniques that can improve anyone’s skills, taught by some well-known music experts. Silver-haired music producer and instructor Rick Beato has built up a YouTube subscriber base numbering more than five million who follow his interviews with artists and note-by-note deconstructions of rock music.
On the drums, jazz legend Peter Erskine and New Orleans master Stanton Moore (who’s appeared on Drumeo) are among big names who offer lessons on increasing one’s hand and foot dexterity, or learning classic rhythms.
The problem is that the digital rabbit hole into which one quickly descends, full of disjointed and occasionally conflicting information, offers little to help students experience steady improvement on their instrument.
In Musora’s case, YouTube content is just a taste of its educational platforms. Those offer sheet-music players, play-along tracks, programs for tracking progress and access to teachers. An algorithm suggests what students should try next based on material they’ve nailed, similar to movie recommendations on Netflix.
The technology is also designed to motivate students to practice, which has become more difficult, especially for young people who face myriad distractions from technology, as well as school systems that have deprioritized music instruction to deal with budget cuts, Mr. Falk says.
He claims to have no long-term business plan, saying Musora is a testament to instinct, trial and error. Not everything has succeeded. For instance, in 2008, he and his associates tried to recreate the initial buzz his drum videos and lessons were generating by offering piano and guitar lookalikes.
Back then, the outfit had limited resources, and they were stretched too thin. The expansion failed miserably. But the idea remained.
A wall of snare drums at the Musora studio, where artists from well-known bands like The Mars Volta, Pearl Jam and The Police stop by to demonstrate their skills, create new drum parts for songs they’ve never heard and chat about their work.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
The company branched out again in 2015, this time focusing just on keyboards and with a new emphasis on the personalities on screen. Jame Falk knew Lisa Witt, a young piano teacher with an interest in music therapy, from their church. He was impressed by her energy and engaging style and figured she’d move easily into the format.
It has worked out. Ms. Witt has amassed a sizable fan and subscriber base for the venture, called Pianote. Her video demonstrating how to create emotion with three notes, filmed five years ago, has garnered 2.2 million views on YouTube.
“People need to see somebody that they can connect with and feel like is relatable to them,” she says. “But you also have to blend that with a sense of what I can bring you – musicians or access to music in a way you haven’t experienced before.”
Now, Ms. Witt works alongside colleague Kevin Castro to produce material modelled on the Drumeo concept, featuring big names such as Jon Batiste and Scott Bradlee, the founder of Postmodern Jukebox. She also developed Singeo, the vocals platform.
“We built up a large following there through content with her and then we built out the premium resources on our platform and that really then started to grow,” Jared Falk says.
The business grew steadily for the better part of two decades, but it exploded with the COVID-19 pandemic. Holed up in their homes, millions of people made the decision to brush up on all kinds of skills rather than binge-watching Tiger King or doom scrolling on their phones – and that included musical ones.
Musora’s business saw major growth when the pandemic hit and more people decided to take up music lessons from home.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
When Jame Falk had stepped into the role as CEO in 2019, the business operated with about 30 employees. By 2022, staff had nearly quadrupled, including content creators, video editors, instructors, software engineers, customer support staff and others, located in Abbotsford and working remotely from other parts of the world.
“We felt that in all the numbers and all the reporting and all the new students that were starting was the sentiment of, ‘I’m stuck at home. I want to do something productive,’” he says.
And many did, shelling out US$240 a year for subscriptions, which makes up 80 per cent of Musora’s revenue. The company is profitable, he says. Jared Falk owns the majority, and his partner Dave Atkinson, a drummer who is Musora’s vice-president of partnerships, has a minority interest.
Musora is not in the market for outside investors – at least not now, as it sticks to what it knows best, Jame Falk says.
Drumeo-labelled cereal at the Musora studio.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
“I mean we grew up five minutes from here, farming ducks and chickens and geese and all that. So, we don’t really know that whole V.C.-private equity-IPO world too well,” he says. “And it’s kind of allowed us to kind of fly under the radar a little bit and build this thing into what it is.”
Indeed, Jared Falk says he’s been offered “large sums of money” for the business, but has turned down all offers, reasoning he would only want to build the same kind of venture again.
The latest concept puts an established band in a studio to learn a song outside its usual genre and cover it in its own style. The process is guided by Ron Jackson, a former school teacher with experience in musical theatre.
The idea, he says, is to show the communication process at work – how members figure out what to play and when. That includes the rough patches that inevitably arise when members disagree about direction, tempo and other variables.
“We like to see the back and forth, and how they overcome that,” Mr. Jackson says. “It’s cool because if they’ve made it as a band, they have some level of communication that I think is worth sharing with the world, and that usually comes across on camera,” he says.
In a recent episode, jazz drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. and his ensemble Generation Y tackle Nirvana’s In Bloom to great effect.
Brandon Toews leads the on-camera chats with musicians on Drumeo’s social-media channel.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Toews, meanwhile, has established himself as the main personality for Drumeo, leading the on-camera discussions with artists such as Mr. Cameron who perform on the channel. He also films his own demonstrations of how drummers including jazz legend Art Blakey and Carlton Barrett of Bob Marley and the Wailers played on classic tracks.
Last year the 28-year-old produced a full-length documentary about Phil Collins, called Drummer First, which garnered headlines globally.
Mr. Toews, who has a natural affinity for getting drummers to open up in front of the camera, has been involved since he was a teenage drum student of Jared Falk. He attributes at least some of the success of the product to a dedication to authenticity, helped by the fact that so many musicians contribute to the content.
“Our best audio engineers who are mixing for the final video are drummers, our video editors are drummers, our social media managers are drummers,” he says. “So from the time that video was filmed, there’s care and attention to detail that’s worked all the way through the process to the day it’s released.”
For his part, Jared Falk says he plans to keep testing out new concepts for the platform – some will work, some won’t – as he believes the business has more potential for growth. The one constant, he says, is that he will keep bashing out rhythms on the drums.
“I saw so many people in the music industry, like the CEOs of companies, would stop playing music. That’s not the whole point of this. The whole point is to keep playing, otherwise, what’s the point? If I can’t play drums, then what am I doing?”