Say Goodbye to 2015 and Hello to 2016

2015 was another milestone year for our group, as we once again added a staggering amount of content. You may wonder why we focus on adding new lessons each year, and the reasoning is simple. The guitar is diverse; in genres, in skill levels, and in style being played. From Gypsy Jazz and Heavy Metal, to acoustic Folk and Bluegrass.. there is so much to cover and so many genres to teach!

Without question, the biggest advancement in our platform in 2015 was the addition of In-Studio Workshops. These 8 to 10 week courses are focused, task-based workshops which include full tablature, interactivity with the instruction, and even homework each week (view "Fingerstyle Foundation" and "Strum-It-Up" as examples. While we still plan on our daily, Live Q&A with our instructors, we will be adding many more Live Workshops in 2016.. with new chat software to boot!

Want an Example? Here is an archive of one of our live sessions, recorded November 2nd, 2015.

Live - Week 2 - Fingerstyle Foundations" with Jim Deeming (skip first 5 minutes)

We of course offer a no-questions-asked money back guarantee with our service, and are proud to report that in 2015, only 0.012% of our transactions were refunded. You can call and ask our accountants to back that one up. Additionally, our server uptime this year was also very solid, and only downtime was during planned servicing for our databases.

As alot of you may know, we recoded our Member Area this year to give you a cleaner layout, more effecient load times, and a better experience on mobile devices and tablets. This was a much needed, and fun endeavor for our team, and will allow us to build new features much quicker than in the past.

We aren't sure if you will have much interest in this, but we still wanted to get some feedback from our team about 2015, and what they felt they were looking forward to next year. Here are the results... some long, some short, but as you will see, we are excited for 2016 and what the future holds!

Jeff Booth

JamPlay, LLC Co-Founder

To me, the year 2015 can be summed up in one word : focus. We've set our sights back on improving our product and taking care of our customers and pursued this relentlessly, letting the nonsense fall back to the wayside. This has led to a near complete recoding of our members area, introduction of interactive features such as live workshops and badges, and completely changed our criteria for selecting teachers and planning lessons. This change should lead to a marked improvement in JamPlay over the next few years.

My personal highlight for the year was developing and launching our first live workshops. Retooling the studio, learning a completely new platform, developing a new workflow and learning new software was great fun and opened up new possibilities. But all that was eclipsed by customer comments after the first few weeks. People were truly learning from the live format, and benefitting immensely from the instant and immediate interaction. Technology is fun, but our ultimate goal is to spread music and the joy that comes with it.

Beyond that, it's been a year of revisiting our past. We've had some of our favorite teachers come back to create new content and reshoot some of our older stuff. Seeing Steve Eulberg, Hawkeye Herman, Michael "Nomad" Ripoll, Stuart Ziff, Eve Goldberg, Jim Deeming, David Wallimann and Orville Johnson was great fun. These people helped us build our business, so it's always a pleasure to work with them and reconnect to our roots.

Heading into 2016, our sense of focus is palpable. We have big plans for next year, and all of them involve becoming better at what we do. We want people to learn, and more so, do it in a fun and effective way.

Kevin Wimer

JamPlay, LLC Co-Founder

2015 was a great year for JamPlay. We were able to put a lot of the technical obstacles behind us and make major progress on features that customers would enjoy. With the addition of JamPoints, badges, and live lessons...JamPlay is really offering something unique to its members. That puts a smile on my face.

For 2016, I expect we'll do more of the same. My hope is that we keep focusing on delivering quality content and innovative technology, allowing us to continue both entertaining and educating our users.

Chris Dawson

JamPlay, LLC Co-Founder

I'm going to ramble a little bit, which I usually do with a blank word document and a cup of coffee. Let's start with a simple statement: running a business is tricky. It is a constant push and pull between that which matters to you, and that which matters to the customers you serve. Any business has a natural tendency to blur these lines. The first lines of code for JamPlay were written in 2006. In the beginning of a company, there is always the purity of purpose. You are building a product to serve a group of people, and solve a problem. This drives the people within the business, and the leaders themselves. This purity can drive even the smallest group of people to do some amazing things, but can be short lived by the demands of success, the pressures of consistency, and ever-growing "noise" that arrives from growing pains.

We suffered this. From 2007 to 2012, we were customer-centric. Our motives were driven by our students, and problems solved with the product in mind. Marketing was the 4th business operation we thought of, and usually felt like a waste of time in lieu of product improvements. But with the success of this approach, the inevitable growing pains of our growth were slowly creating unavoidable problems. Server efficiency became an issue, subscriber management software became limiting, and what was once 'new age' code became antiquated in an ever-changing and mobilized landscape. Like other companies in a similar position, we were becoming victims of our own successes. Motorcycle builder Jesse James, when asked about the growth of his company once said, "I just wanted to build bikes, but I'm not allowed to do that anymore." That statement always stuck with me, and seemed to foreshadow our future as the company shifted from growth stage to maturity. I didn't fully understand it's veracity until the last 36 months.

We struggled in 2014. The internal logistics needed to move the company ahead had bloomed into a monster we couldn't avoid any longer. Customers suffered. Our product suffered. What used to be coding new tools for guitar players turned into lawyers, outsourcing server-side improvements, and battling our own internal infrastructure. We worked long weeks, and tiresome months.. and customers didn't benefit from any of it. The purity of our business was now wrapped in an internal war between wanting to appease your customer base, to struggling to keep the ship sailing smoothly. It took us 2 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to pull our company into the modern era. The consequence was both a frustrated workforce, and a frustrated customer base.. and it couldn't be avoided.

So that's the crappy part... but I figured the backstory was needed to pain the picture for the future. As of 2014-2015, we are free from the restrictions of our internal operations, and a bit wiser on the allocation between forward-facing improvements and managing a growth cycle. What once was 30 hours of a week for internal operations is now 3, and what at first mattered most, is now our number one priority; the customer base.

The proof is in our past 7 months of operation. In this short development cycle, we have already recoded every-single-line of our member area, created entirely new subsections of our service, and completely overhauled our live platform. This is both rewarding, and exciting. The company is starting to feel new again, and I'm very excited about the next 6-12 months. Not only are we overhauling our chat platform, but also scheduling even more Live Courses, which will move our service into a new category of education.

I think I should stop now, I just broke to the second page. Cheers!

Matt Korsmo

CTO

When I look back on 2015, the thing that has impressed me the most was our solid uptime record. We had very strong availability across all of our applications. The redesign of our lessons page was another highlight.

Looking toward 2016, I expect we will bring more innovation to the site, new features oriented around helping out members target the content that will help them achieve their guitar and bass learning goals. I'm also excited to release our new chat application, which I spearheaded this fall. We are using state-of-the-art languages and technologies for this software package, which always get me excited. This will further our strides in the live arena, and make our systems even more reliable and efficient.

Chris Liepe

Producer

Wow...What a year! 2015 marked the 6th year I've been involved with JamPlay and has been one of the most exciting and rewarding years yet! In late 2014, I had the privilege of planning a massive new beginner guitar course with one of Nashville's finest instructors, Dave Isaacs. We shot this series in early 2015 and from the moment it was live on the site, we could tell it was going to be a "must take" course for our members. I think it has worked so well for our students for two main reasons: Dave's pacing when going through examples is as if you were right there in the room with him taking a private lesson and the whole course is focused not around learning concepts (although those are learned and applied in depth), but around learning real music. This way, the student gets to feel creative and musical from the very first lesson they participate in.

During our last holiday sale, JamPlay hosted our first ever live event that included multiple instructors, giveaways and performances. This event marked a HUGE turn in the way guitar players started to learn in 2015. Throughout the year, we put on several more successful events featuring some of our most widely loved instructors including Hawkeye Herman, Emil Werstler, and Will Ripley. This fall, we have been offering 10-week live courses that interactively and purposefully take you from point A to point B within specific areas of guitar playing. I've had a blast planning and presenting courses and have thoroughly enjoyed what other instructors have done with this new platform as well. Want to free up your strumming and find that natural groove? Want to improve essential techniques for lead playing? Are you new to fingerstyle playing and want to start off with the right tools? Our archived live sessions from 2015 deal with these topics and more. As an instructor, I have found that this live teaching approach much more closely matches the intimate and well-paced feel of private lessons. While I love the concise and focused feel of our on-demand course library, I really enjoy the ability to interact directly in real time with the students.

Overall, I feel like 2015 has brought me, and content provider and producer, closer to students we serve. I've enjoyed seeing many of you play through our new badges program and the opportunity to write several "Weekend Warrior" articles has been rewarding and exciting. As we move into 2016, I look forward to seeing many of the seeds planted this past year flourish. We've got big plans for our live platform, more great new site features that are going to encourage even more interactivity, and I personally am looking forward to connecting more directly with more and more students! Thank you for he humbling and rewarding opportunity to teach you about guitar!

Deb Cawley

Customer Service

2015 was a year or great improvements and strides for me personally in JamPlay and for the site. I really love the new format and design of the site, and looks and feels more "organized" and simplified.

Personally, I got to really feel more comfortable at my job, how to handle customers more effectively and quickly and with more confidence.

Chris Smith

Producer

Wow, 2015 was a fun, busy year at Jam Play! Being one of the primary film session directors, I was fortunate to spend some quality time with great JamPlay instructors like, Evan Brewer, Will Ripley, Hawkeye Herman, Brendan Burns, Steve Eulberg, Marcelo, and Stuart Ziff. And just a little behind the scenes tidbit for you - not only are all these guys great guitarists and teachers, they are also all super people! Being a guitarist and musician myself, it's pretty much heaven for me getting to spend time with these guys and get to know them as people and learn a lot about the guitar along the way. JamPlay members are in for a real treat coming up soon - you're going to see a great series from Brendan Burns on the Style of AC/DC, as well as an incredible Rockabilly series from Stuart Ziff. In addition, Marcelo tackled some solo guitar versions of four classic Beatles songs, and Will Ripley returned just last week to film his Phase Two Classic Rock Guitar series!

2015 also saw the development of the Live Events at Jamplay, which I got to be a part of. Helping direct the live events is such a fun experience, and is a completely different experience from filming. I particularly enjoyed our all day 4th of July live event. Not only was there some great content that day, but I felt it was really a "team building" event.

I'm really looking forward to what 2016 will bring here at JamPlay! I think the live events are really going to go to the next level, and I know there will be some other really great film sessions as well. And all of this if for one reason: to help people learn how to creatively express themselves on the guitar! What could be better than that? I wish all JamPlay members a great holiday, and hope 2016 is a wonderful year for you all!

Jason Mounce

Producer & Editor

Wow, was 2015 a busy one! This past year I spent a good amount of time on song based lessons, which has not only been incredibly enjoyable, but rewarding to my skills as a producer. Being able to fully utilize what I spent many thousands in tuition to educate myself on has been wholly rewarding. In addition, I've enjoyed seeing a major shift back to producing and providing great content for our customers, which does include our latest in a series of live event webinars and bootcamps. It's been a delight seeing the amount of participation and quantifiable learning that has been going on because of these events. I'm happy to see these events continuing in to next year with a focus on helping our customers learn!

With 2015 coming to a close, it's time to start looking towards next year. I'm personally exited about some of the content that we have coming, including a new series on Guitar from Will Ripley as well as one from Alex Scott on the Bass side. In late 2015 we started deploying live workshop based learning that has been quite successful. We've got six more coming starting early in 2016 with ideas for more and recurring items throughout the year. One of the things our customers need is help with the practice and learning process. We've got the information covered, but I'm really looking forward to digging deep and helping our members set goals, get focused and improve on their playing!

Aaron Miller

Marketing Dude. Guitar Dude.

2015 was the year that we shed all our ideas... our thoughts... our desires and listened 100% to you the guitar student and customer. It's the year we added 3 new complete beginner series - polished and refined based on your feedback. The website interface was completely redesigned to be more intuitive and easy to use than ever before. And to further our mission of making guitar as easy to learn as possible, we added live workshops on topics that are most important to you.

In short, I believe JamPlay has been completely transformed in the past 12 months. And the best is yet to come!

In 2016 I think we'll see massive improvements in how you'll interact with our content and practice guitar. I can't be specific, but I think we're going to completely disrupt the online guitar education marketplace.

Chad Fawcett

Producer & Editor

2015 has definitely been an eventful year! Between a major and much needed site overhaul and the advent of interactive live workshops, the JamPlay experience for our members and staff has gone through some serious changes this year. Change can be hard, but in this case, the changes have been very good and very worth it! Personally, I have really enjoyed interacting with the JamPlay community through the live workshops and seeing first hand the excitement and eagerness to learn and become better musicians. For 2016, I hope to see us continue to expand and improve on the interactive features of the site. I'm really excited to be a part of the live workshops that will be kicking off first thing in January! From a technical standpoint, I hope to see us improving and getting even more creative with how we capture and present our lessons, both live and prerecorded. I think we all are feeling the momentum that JamPlay has built up and I have no doubt it is going to be a fun and exciting year! Personally, I would love to continue working on more about the functions in CMS or anyway else I can help within the company, and would love to go to a class on customer service training. Though I feel I do a great job, there is always more to learn to be more efficient and effective.

Cheers! If you are still reading this page, we want to thank you for your loyalty and interest in our company. We are a small group of people on a mission to bring guitar, and guitar education, into the hands of anyone with passion for the instrument.. and thank you for being a part of this wild ride. Cheers to 2016!