I recently moved from one of the Southern states to the east coast states, and I am trying to arrange fo Violin lessons for child/ wife, and piano lessons for myself. There seems to be a dramatic increase in the cost. It's possible, I have been spoiled by the low cost of previous lessons. The cost of living in the southern state is overall less. If anyone could post the 30 min., 45 min., and hour cost of lessons, I would appreciate it. Please also post location, and country. I am trying figure out if this is a regional difference. Thanks.

I live in NY, just outside the city. When I did my research it seemed average was a dollar/min more or less. $30 to 35 for 30 mins, $60 to 65 for an hour. Also maybe 5 dollars off if you go to one's home / studio vs them coming to you.

i pay $35 for a half-hour trumpet lesson from one of the best teachers around. i would think that same range would be what piano teachers would charge. in northwest ohio, where i grew up, lessons are like $15, but pretty much anywhere else they seem to be twice that.

I pay $18 for half hour per week at a music store in eastern North Carolina.

I pay $80 dolloars for one hour - New York City.

My brother and his wife moved to Tennessee a few years ago and they say the cost of living is less expensive than the northeast. Must be regional.

Maybe you could create a multiplier and discern how much the price of general goods/cost of living has increased and impliment that to your piano lessons. That's probably how much you should be willing to pay for the same quality of lessons you had in the South.

With my old teacher it was like $40 a month, weekly lessons.

Now its about $35 per half hour with the new teacher.

$40 for about 45 minutes (he isn't strict on the time, we cover the needed material which varies between about 40 and 60 minutes each week).

The roughly $1/minute seems to fall in line with what I was seeing when I was looking around, give or take a few $$.

I'm in Northern Virginia/DC metro.

$40 a month????? Seriously? Did your teacher eat bird seed?

$20 for 30 minutes, $40 for an hour for me. I'm near Rochester, NY. It seems to be the going rate around these parts.

I use a teacher in a music store.
The plans are:

$25 for a single 30 min. lesson
$85 for 4 30 min. lessons
$240 for 12 30 min. lessons.

I do the $85 plan, so 21.25 for 30 min

Oh, BTW, that is in Long Island, NY

I can't imagine getting paid that much.

I'm not sure how posting rates from all over the states is going to help you. The market rate for your area is whatever it is, regardless.

Perhaps its better to see the correlation between these market rates and the cost of living indices across the country. Perhaps that will make you feel better about your new most costly lessons.

http://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/index.stm

Where on LI is this? I mean, I love my teacher right now, but that's cheap!

That was a fascinating website, Akira; thanks for posting it. Kentucky has the 4th lowest cost of living index of all the states! WOOT!! Makes my salary look better... and it sure makes me glad I left California...

p.s. Daughter's flute lessons cost $18 per half hour.

In the Sacramento area, piano lessons are $90 per month for 4 30 minute lessons at some local music stores. Teachers give up to half to the store owner/manager in some cases.
Home studios range from $72 to over $100 from my understanding.
I'm in the middle of that range.

California is really not that bad

True indeed. As I'm watching the first of a projected 4 inches of snow starting to fall outside my window, I'm reminded that there's a good reason people pay more to live in California!

I bet your snow is prettier than our rain though. Dreary looking here!

It's only pretty when it first falls. Over the course of a rough winter you come to hate the sight of it and after sloshing/driving through it for the better part of four months (or longer depending on where you live) it becomes rather ugly. I'd opt for the rain any day.

Here in Los Angeles there a a few older well experienced teachers who still teach in their homes for less but going rates for lessons with four different teacher on 3 different teacher all worked out to about 1.00 a minute. For my own piano lessons, I pay 45 for an hour. It's a little bit of a second family member discount, the fact that she likes having an adult dedicated practicer and the fact that I take early afternoon (before school let's out) time slots.

KZ

I live near LA in South Pasadena.

My piano lesson at the local music school is $27 for 1/2 hour.

My guitar lesson at my home is $60 for 1 hour.

Bruce
South Pasadena

It's all about your local cost of living. There's no point comparing what you pay in a region where the average house costs say $350,000 and the average wage is say $45,000 with another region where the average house costs $680,000 and the average wage is $95,000.

I take lessons at the University. There is a program that awards scholarships based on need. Because I'm a typically poor 20-something, I pay only $65 per semester for 12 lessons (which end up 30-40 minutes), slightly less for 10 lessons in the summer. My teacher is a gifted graduate student who performs the hardest Liszt very well, and a very good teacher also. Pretty good deal And no, I'm not actually enrolled as a student there, I just take the lessons. It's worth looking into your local university or college, wherever you are.

When you do the math, teachers could make very good money for not much time working. Let's say you give 4 one-hour lessons per day at the rate of $60 per hour, 5 days a week. That's $1200 per week, over $62,000 per year (not sure how tax works on this stuff) only working 16 hours. That's a pretty comfortable living for a single person, anywhere in the country, with plenty of free time. What a nice gig!

Even piano teachers think it's a nice gig but that's because they don't really understand how business works - they don't calculate their costs accurately, they don't amortize their hourly rate over the hours they work in addition to the contact hours, they don't calculate holiday pay, sick pay, superannuations/insurances (this will vary from one country to the next), and so forth.

These are the mistakes made by many small business owners, and why many small businesses do not succeed, but of course the business model with piano teachers is one of service provider rather than seller of goods, and a service provider such as a piano teacher does have lower overheads and more predictable cash flow than many small businesses, which is why you don't hear of piano teachers 'going out of business'....

A good rule of thumb is that, whatever the gross hourly rate, the teacher is ACTUALLY making at best 45% of that figure (when expressed as an hourly rate). Here in Australia piano teachers rarely *gross* even the average wage, and I wouldn't think even the very most expensive teachers would net the average wage.

Hi Elissa

Yes, I am in Australia too, and have a PhD and heaps of degrees in music. The Music Teachers' Association of Queensland recommends A$60 an hour as the minimum rate, and I can hardly get tha. Some students opt for a fortnightly lesson - I even have one who has one a month!
It's the general financial situation, I guess, though I do no see anyone suffering at the Malls!
Robert Keane

I think as a teacher part of the trick is to live in an area where kids will want lessons AND have parents earning at least the average wage and paying no more than the average mortgage!!!

I pay about 34 euros per 45 minute lesson in Copenhagen, Denmark, which I find is a fair price for private tuition. Lesser can be paid for on a musical school with subsidization by the municipality. But I prefer my teaching 1-on-1.

I've recently begun lessons paying $160 a month for a weekly one hour lessons from a very well qualifled teacher (Phd in piano performance etc) who teaches in the studio of the non-profit "music academy" offshoot of a local university. The "academy" appears to have been founded as a local "feed in" to their music program as most of the instructors seem to be semi retired or former college music faculty. They must have seen the need as there are very few truly qualified instructors around here otherwise. The "academy" charges the same rate for violin, woodwind or voice instruction and offers weekly half hours lessons for $80 a month. This is in relatively low income area of the South.

The average family income is $46,056, the average cost of a house is $139,176.

I'm paying 105 € per month, which includes 1 hour piano + 1 hour theory/solfege every week.
I live in Barcelona (Spain)


PS: Theory and solfege are group lessons. Piano is 1 to 1.

I pay $25 for a half hour lesson, but often get 45 minutes or an hour for that.
An "average" condo here (west coast of Canada) costs about $400,000, a house close to a million.

And I work as a language tutor, which is a similar financial arrangement to teaching piano. Elissa, you're exactly right about working more unpaid hours than paid. Also, I doubt that any piano teacher would try to teach 4 hours straight - if I had 4 language students in a row, I'd be a basket case at the end of it. Keep in mind, it's one-to-one, which unlike classroom teaching, means you're 'on' all the time. Also,, each student is at a different level, so it's a different course to prepare & keep track of. I charge similar rates to a piano teacher, & my hourly rate works out to less than half what each student pays me for time I actually spend with them. Same goes for piano teachers, I'm sure. They work hard for their money, & the rewards, I'm sure, are mostly non-material.