Pickup Music

What Pickup Music is

Pickup Music is an online lessons membership for guitar, bass and piano players, built around structured courses with personal feedback. Its home page offers "Guitar, bass and piano lessons with 1-on-1 video feedback on your playing", and its FAQ says the company specializes "in taking players stuck in a rut and turning them into advanced musicians". It is a learner product, aimed above all at self-taught players stuck at what it calls the intermediate plateau, though every instrument also has beginner pathways.

The About page says Pickup Music started in 2015 as an Instagram community run by co-founder and jazz guitarist Sam Blakelock, which grew into "one of the largest online communities of musicians connecting through lessons, live shows, meet-ups, and challenges." Today the company is based in Los Angeles, describes itself as fully bootstrapped and 100% independently owned, and counts over 50,000 members. Blakelock is CEO alongside co-founder Cam Nolan, Karl Kerfoot is head of education, Rob Araujo leads piano and Nick Cisneros leads bass.

The intermediate plateau and the Learning Pathways

The FAQ describes the plateau plainly: the basics are easy, but after a few chords and scales players fall back to "playing the same things over and over again" or bounce between free lessons that never stick. Pickup Music's answer is the Learning Pathway, a grade-by-grade system with daily lessons, play-along practice exercises and interactive workouts. The FAQ says a pathway runs over 6 grades, and every grade builds up to performing a song with a live backing band, which "simulates what it's like to play a real gig, with real musicians."

Pathways are divided into days, but the FAQ says that is only a suggestion. Everything is on demand with no deadlines, so a learner can stay on a topic until it makes sense before moving on. New members start with a free personalized learning plan.

The course catalog

The guitar catalog is the deepest. Its core is the Beginner, Late Beginner, Intermediate and Late Intermediate Learning Pathways with Karl Kerfoot, two CAGED pathways with Dr. Molly Miller and a Triads pathway with Eli Koskoff. Style pathways include Jazz (John Storie), Bluegrass (Andrew Brozek), Metal (MYRONE), Groove (Kelyn Crapp), Soloing (Sam Blakelock), Rock (Joshua Ray Gooch), Fingerstyle (Collin Hill), Neo Soul (Melanie Faye), Blues (Seth Rosenbloom), Country (Daniel Donato), Music Theory (Dr. Quentin Angus) and Jazz Soloing (Cecil Alexander). Around them sit short courses such as Clean Chord Switching in 7 Days and Lead for Beginners in 7 Days with Dan Kalisher, Play Like Hendrix With CAGED in 7 Days, Learn the 3:2 System in 10 Days with Spencer Askin, Get Started With Sight Reading in 9 Days, How to Write a Melodic Prog Solo with Plini, Slide Guitar with Ariel Posen, Two-Handed Tapping with Sarah Longfield, Introduction to Classical Guitar with Evan Taucher and Intro to Ear Training with Michael Mayo.

Bass has its own Beginner through Late Intermediate pathways and a Jazz pathway with Corbin Jones, Rock with Pete Griffin, Funk with Nick Cisneros, Blues with Dylan Wilson, Bass for Guitarists with Jonathan Colman and Decode Your Fretboard with Alex Polydoroff, plus short courses on walking bass, slap, ghost notes, grooves and playing like James Jamerson. Piano is the smallest catalog: Beginner, Late Beginner and Intermediate pathways with Dion Todman, a Jazz pathway with Rob Araujo, and short courses on hand independence, R&B keys, jazz piano chords and piano for producers and guitarists.

The courses page says it all comes under "One membership", with "all inclusive access to all guitar, bass and piano courses". Built-in tools include a metronome, guitar and bass tuners and a chord library.

Feedback, live lessons and practice

The personal side is what Pickup Music leans on. Members submit a video of their playing, and an expert coach sends back "a detailed feedback video with what to work on next." The About page names the coaching team, guitar mentors such as Jack Handyside and bass mentors such as Ben Sturley. Members can also attend weekly live lessons, and the site separately offers private and small group live lessons online. The FAQ calls this personal feedback "the closest thing to taking in-person lessons, but at a fraction of the cost."

Band practice uses a live-recorded band, which the home page says builds "stage-ready confidence". Lessons work on desktop, tablet and mobile, and progress syncs between devices.

Price, trial and guarantee

The pricing page offers one membership, billed either monthly or for 12 months, with the 12-month option shown as a 50% saving. The FAQ gives the yearly membership as $180 for the whole year.

Every membership starts with a 14-day free trial, and the FAQ says nothing is charged if a member cancels during it, with a reminder sent before it ends. Canceling is a button on the account page, and a canceled membership stays active until its renewal date. On top of the trial, first-time customers who sign up through the website get a 60-day money-back guarantee: if they are not happy with their progress in the first 60 days, the FAQ says they get their money back, no questions asked.

The FAQ sets that yearly price against its own estimates of private lessons at about $50 per lesson or $2,600 a year and a music academy at about $40,000 a year, and works it out to 50 cents a day.

What members say

The home page reports that 91% of users improve their playing after joining, 83% say it got them out of a learning rut and 90% recommend it, and claims learning is 4x faster than being self-taught, figures it shows next to its Trustpilot rating. The pricing page shows badges for over 600 and over 500 five-star reviews, one of them on Trustpilot. Member quotes include Anna from Berlin, who says the Learning Pathways "are perfectly structured in bite-size chunks", and Mark from London, who values "real people giving you feedback on your playing".

Who it suits

Pickup Music suits guitar, bass and piano players who can already play a little and want a plan: someone who has played the same scales for years, a guitarist who wants a structured route into jazz, country or neo soul, or a bassist working on groove. The graded pathways and band play-alongs give practice a direction, and the video feedback adds a teacher's eye without weekly lesson fees. Beginners are covered too, through the beginner pathways on each instrument.

Guitar gets by far the largest catalog, so pianists and bassists have fewer styles to choose from. Coaching comes through video feedback and weekly live lessons rather than a regular one-to-one teacher, though the site also sells private live lessons for anyone who wants one.