How Much Do Online Guitar Lessons Cost?

By: Pro Lessons

March 9, 2016
Cost of Online Guitar Lessons

Rates, Fees, & Comparing Options

Are you a guitar player, student or parent searching to find the perfect online guitar lesson company? Do you wonder how much you can actually be expected to pay for online guitar lessons? Why are different online guitar lesson companies priced differently, and what factors influence these company’s rates?

Being an owner in both a pro online guitar company (Pro Lessons), and a student music camp (Camp Electric), in addition to having taught over 10,000 music students every summer from all 50 states and several foreign countries for the last decade, I can assure you we appreciate these questions.

As a matter of fact, we have a passion for helping students and parents achieve the success they are looking for in learning to be a better musician. Whether it is a summer music camp or an online guitar lesson, guiding musicians of all different levels and helping them achieve their goals and dreams is what drives us to keep developing these educational companies.

In this article, I want to discuss all of the factors that are involved in finding and pricing online guitar lesson companies.

These points include:

Free YouTube guitar lessons
Free guitar lesson sites
Amateur online guitar lesson sites
Professional guitar teachers that have online guitar lessons
Professional touring guitar players and Nashville (Music City) session players teaching online guitar lessons

So let’s jump in and see what each offers and what you should expect to pay for each.

Free YouTube Guitar Lessons:

Pros and Cons

There are several points to make here. The first is a positive. The word free is good; plain and simple.

You can learn to play many of your favorite songs, seek out some tips and tricks on the guitar, and find answers to many of your questions just through hunting and pecking via YouTube. What we mean by hunting and pecking is that, for the most part, you will need to search for what you are looking for. Most times you will find something in the general realm of what you are seeking. However, look out, because there are not that many systematic lessons that take you step by step from the level you are currently at to help you get to the level where you want to be.

On a not so positive note: it is very hard to know what questions to even ask to help you to become a better guitar player.

So before you can look them up in YouTube, you must know what those questions are. You don’t know what you don’t know, and no I’m not double-talking. Think about it for a minute. You can learn from two ways: Trial and error, or from somebody else. Only somebody who has actually done it knows the right questions to ask and methods to teach. Generally speaking, YouTube is/was not meant to be an online guitar lesson company.

Free Guitar Lesson Sites:

Pros and Cons

Occasionally you may run across a free guitar lesson site. Many times, these sites are run by amateur guitar players. By amateur, we just mean that they operate the site and teach others because of their passion for the guitar.

It’s their hobby. In other words, they make their money/living by doing something other than playing the guitar. There is nothing inherently wrong with many of these sites, and many times the site developer/teacher is quite passionate about whatever their particular instrument may be.

The down side is that most of these sites do not have much of a selection in the way of instructors and are somewhat limited in the scope of their knowledge, curriculum and system.

Amateur Online Guitar Lesson Sites:

Pros and Cons

Many online guitar lesson sites can be posers. Meaning they may talk a big talk, but you get what you pay for.

As mentioned above, all that an amateur means is that they teach and play as a hobby vs. making their living playing their guitar. Many novice students and parents fall prey to paying one of these companies because they may be cheaper than other online sites.

Remember to look at the instructors and do you homework before signing up. These sites may be cheaper, but the cost is infinitely more once you realize what you got on the back-end.

There is not much difference between a free guitar lesson site like those we mentioned above and an amateur site – except that many amateurs have more confidence than talent and actually have the nerve to charge for what should be free.

Hey look at American Idol – I still have trouble believing all those people think they sound great, but somehow along the way they have convinced themselves that they do. Unfortunately it is the same in the guitar world.

How Much Do Online Guitar Lessons Cost?

Professional guitar teachers that have online guitar lessons:

Pros and Cons

First of all, what is the definition of a professional guitar teacher?

A professional guitar teacher is anyone who teaches guitar, and does it for a living. This does not mean that the particular site you are looking at has teachers that are professional touring musicians and session players. Please note that this is a key distinction to be aware of. I’ve said it before – many professional teachers have essentially “played Triple AAA baseball, but have never made it to the major league.” This does not mean they are not qualified and are not good. This also does not mean that you cannot learn about the guitar from them. However, playing in a band that “almost made it” - is a far cry from playing with Taylor Swift. Make sense?

So how much would a site like this cost? Well there is no one exact cost. All sites are different. However, there are some general price ranges that you should be aware of or at least take into consideration.

On average most sites using professional teachers cost around $20 per month.

By the way, when it comes to convenience and affordability, online lessons (most of the times) are a much better option than individual guitar lessons, but we will save that for another discussion. Some of the professional teacher sites cost a little less, some cost a little more. Sometimes you can pay semi-annually or annually and receive some sort of savings/discount. I’ve even seen sites offer membership prices as low as $1. Typically, this just gets you in the door, and within a certain time period if you don’t cancel your subscription, your credit card on file will be charged.

Professional touring and session guitar players:

Pros and Cons

There are a few sites that claim to have professional touring guitar players and session players as their main instructors. It is always a good idea to do a little homework and due diligence to check to make sure what they are “selling” is what you are receiving. Be cautious of any online site that does not show you who your instructors will be. Meaning: make sure you get a list of the sites instructors and the teachers’ individual resumes as to whom they play with, and for.

At Pro Lessons we take it very serious to vet all our instructors to only bring our students the best musicians – primarily from “Music City, Nashville, TN”. You are able to find out who our instructors are and who they played for – long before you need to sign up for anything.

With the owners of Pro Lessons working in the music industry for 20 years, and specifically in music education for the last decade, we are able to leverage relationships via the industry players and make available a site where average students can learn from and access players who, on a normal basis, they would not even be able to meet.

This is the beauty of two things we provide.

First, the owners work with and employ many of these players on a regular basis, so in return, many of these players will work with Pro Lessons via their relationships.

Second, the wonderful technological age that we are living in makes it possible, and allows us to convince the pros to teach a lesson one time and share their guitar insight and knowledge. This would never happen if they had to teach on a regular basis.

As far as specific pricing, only Pro Sites that utilize strictly pro instructors (much like professional teacher sites) share the same pricing.

Again, professional teachers are a little more traditional in nature, while learning from touring pros is something very new and a little more cutting edge.

Think of it this way: Coming to a site like Pro Lessons, and Pro Lessons being one of the very few (if not only) sites that utilizes only pros, you are able to go backstage, behind the rope so to speak, and gain access to learn from those instructors who you aspire to be.

Why learn how to play a song from any ole guitar teacher when you can actually learn it from the pro guitarist who plays the original every night on stage? This is especially true if the pricing is the same. At Pro Lessons you can sign up for over 1,000 videos and songs, all taught by pro’s like Grant Mickelson (who played the last 8 years with Taylor Swift) for as little as 27 cents per day, or $99 annually.

In closing, all the above sites can serve a valuable purpose, and each one is very unique. Just remember, when pricing any of the sites, do your homework. Keep these factors in mind as you’re narrowing down who/where to get lessons from: