Piano Teacher Salary: You can make enough to live

When starting your professional career as a piano teacher, it can be very hard to figure out how much money you can expect to make. Will you be able to provide for yourself?

The short answer is “yes,” if you set up your business correctly.

If you try to google “piano teacher salary,” the 4 most popular websites will be:

https://www.indeed.com/piano-teacher salaries

https://www.glassdoor.com/piano-teacher-salary

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Piano-Teacher-Salary

https://www.salary.com/piano-teachers-salary

You will find out that piano teachers make between $10.82 – $53.12 an hour (Ziprecruter.com data) with the median rate around $30/ hour. All four websites calculate your weekly and yearly income based on working around 40 hours a week and working year-round.

These calculations are completely detached from the reality of running a private piano studio. In order to teach 40 hours/week, you would need to teach 80 students 30-minute lessons each! WOW! Good luck with that. You could teach some students 45 minutes and 60 minutes. That would still require you to teach around 50-60 students a week.

The vast majority of piano teachers have 20-40 students. I think around 30 students are enough to have a full studio.

How will that be enough for a good piano teacher salary?

I live in the Midwest, where well-established teachers usually make around $60-80/hour. Majority of the lessons are 30 minutes long, so you get paid around $30-40 a lesson.

If we do simple math $30/lesson x 30 students a week = $900/week, $3600/month, and $43,200/year. Of course, in real-life situations, it doesn’t quite work this simple.

There are holidays, sickness, vacations, scheduling conflicts, etc.

Let’s try to figure out how many students YOU will need to recruit in order to have enough income.

The first few years, be prepared to scramble a bit, but eventually you will be able to make a comfortable living.

While you are building your private studio, look into other possibilities to make income as a pianist.

Here are a few of the options available:

Teaching on an online platform like outschool.com

This is a very popular online platform for individual and group lessons used by teachers all over the world. It is used widely by home-schooling parents for extracurricular activities. During the COVID outbreak, many traditionally schooled children were using this platform, as well. 

You, as a teacher, will recruit your own students. It is a similar process to building a private studio. At first, you will need to provide deeply discounted classes. Your students will hopefully leave you excellent reviews, and slowly, you will ‌raise your profile and demand for your lessons. More demand you have, the higher the prices you can charge.

Teachers charge anywhere from $15 – $60+ for a 30-minute lesson. Outschool.com takes a 30% fee for using their services. 

You will be responsible for all the equipment for online teaching and a piano/keyboard.

The 30% fee by Outschool.com is lower than the typical music store would charge you for accessing their students.

Outschool.com allows you to set your own price, which is very beneficial.

Teaching at a local music store

I never taught piano lessons in a music store because of the low pay. Typically, a store will charge students a regular lesson rate but will pay a teacher 50% or less. While this is a good way to get piano students quickly, you will always be paid much lower than other local teachers.

You can teach in a store AND build your private studio at the same time. Your goal should be to have an independent studio.

The biggest advantage of working in a store – it is time efficient. You don’t need to recruit students, don’t need a piano, and you get new students quickly.

The downsides are plenty:

• Your pay is very low, and the turnover of students is high.
• You cannot switch the students to your home studio. Usually, a music store will make you sign a “non-compete” clause in their contract. Even if you decide to quit your employment, you won’t be able to take your students.
• You need to travel to the store.

During COVID-19, many music stores closed and left their teachers jobless. Your job security completely depends on one source of income. 

Having your own private studio will provide much more job security. If you have 30 students, you have 30 sources of income. Students can quit‌, of course, but it’s hard to imagine all 30 students quitting at once.

New student recruitment must be an ongoing process in order to secure a steady stream of income.

Before the COVID outbreak, I had around 35 students. As soon as the lockdown happened, I lost about five students. During the next few months, I lost five more students. They wanted a substantial discount for online lessons which I did not agree to.

I could still maintain a full studio with 25 students. My expenses went substantially down, since I was not driving to my student’s houses anymore. The vast majority of the students kept taking lessons the whole time.

Working in a church

Working in a church should be another source of income you should look into.

Typically, a pianist can find an organist/pianist and accompanist position in a local church. You should make around $1,000+ /month. It is not great, but at least it will provide some cushion while you are building your piano studio.

Usually you will work on Sunday mornings (1-2 services) and one weeknight for a choir rehearsal. They might ask you to attend a staff meeting during a weekday.

There are also music director positions available, but those are much harder to find and get. You would need to conduct a choir, have some prior work experience, and be able to play organ. The vast majority of church musicians are actually terrible at playing organ, so don’t be afraid of the instrument. My wife is a professional organist, and we are surprised by how many churches have very weak musicians.

While the church position seems like a great workplace, there are multiple downsides to it as well. Your holidays will always be busy, you will not have weekends for yourself, the burnout rate at churches is very high, and your pastor might be hard to work with. Be prepared for last-minute changes and unexpected requests regularly.

I worked in multiple churches, but I quit a few years ago and will never go back. My work experience was mostly positive, but it gets harder the older you get.

You can also get on local churches’ substitute musician list. Churches always are looking for substitute musicians when their permanent musician is not available.

Other Income Options

Other lower paid side-hustles for pianists include accompanying for community choirs, school choirs, private music studio accompanist, or adjunct accompanist at a local university.

These will typically offer much lower pay than you could make by teaching students.

I used to work at a local university as an accompanist. My primary goal was to make connections with other local musicians and make myself practice and perform regularly. The pay was very low, but I could meet many wonderful local musicians.

How to set up lesson rates

One of the essential tasks when starting a private studio is to decide on the rate you will charge for your lessons. At first be prepared to give a bit of a price discount but not more than $5. If you price your lesson too low, it will be very difficult to raise the rates at a later time.

There are a significant number of parents and students looking for an affordable teacher. I have found that usually, people who are looking for the cheapest teacher are not very committed to lessons, though.

Start by calling local music stores and see what their prices are. You can also talk to local teachers and see what their current rates are. Local teachers’ rates will vary depending on their reputation and how long they’ve had their studios. Some teachers are very successful at marketing themselves and charging high prices.

There will be teachers who charge negligible prices, but they usually lack formal education and necessary skills. You will need to explain to potential students the difference between you and an untrained teacher.

How much do music teachers make a year?

At the beginning stages of building your private music studio, recruiting more and more students is the primary goal. At some point, you might find that you are working too much and do not enjoy teaching anymore. I know full-time private music teachers who teach anywhere from 20 to 60+ students.

My piano studio is well established and most of my students have been taking lessons with me for years. The vast majority of my students are committed to piano lessons and try their best not to miss lessons unnecessarily. I do not charge students for last-minute cancellations because of sickness.

I’ve been tracking my income over the years for taxes. Here is an analysis of my piano studio income in the months of September, October, and November in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Year 2020 is the COVID lock-down year. I did not teach any in-person lessons during that whole time. I restarted in-person lessons in the summer of 2021.

Let’s compare the projected income to my actual income.

My projected income is based on students taking four lessons/ month and missing no lessons.

My actual income during these three years was lower by 13% in 2019, 4% in 2020, and 9% in 2021. I also calculated a year round attendance for 13 of my students in the same 3 years and found a similar attendance rate.

There were few students who missed a lot of lessons, but that was a small minority. I also had a few students who quit, but I got new students to replace them.

In 2019, my schedule was very busy and I almost never made-up lessons. In 2020, during the COVID outbreak, my actual income was only 4% lower than the projected amount. I did not miss any lesson, and I tried to do as many makeup lessons as possible.

In 2021, the students were getting busier again, and the income was down by 9%, but it was still higher than in 2019. It is easier to make up lessons now with the online option.

You can see in the charts below the difference between projected and actual income based on my experience running a piano studio in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The chart does not account for other expenses, such as gas, mileage, instrument maintenance, insurance, taxes, rent, etc.

The projected MONTHLY income based on 4 lessons/month.

The projected YEARLY income is based on 48 lessons.

The projected YEARLY income is based on 48 lessons.

The projected YEARLY income is based on 48 lessons.

The projected YEARLY income is based on 48 lessons.

Be prepared that during the summer months of July and August, you will lose more lessons due to summer vacations.

I have some students who take off every summer for 1-2 months.

Can you make a living as a piano teacher?

The short answer is yes, but it’s going to take time and effort. The harder you market yourself, the more successful you’ll be. You’ll want to make sure you have a way to feed yourself while you work on building your studio to where it will sustain your lifestyle.

Being a piano teacher is rewarding and fun most of the time. It’s a career choice I made years ago and never looked back. Still, make sure you know what you’re doing and that you have a plan.

Good luck.

BONUS: I’ve attached a spreadsheet to track mileage and expenses. The first rule of owning your own business is to track the money in and out – every penny!