recorder-ed.com

recorder-ed handles everything a private music tutor needs beyond a brochure site, from lessons and workshops to courses and digital-product sales, all built and maintained solo on Django and PostgreSQL with Stripe for payments.

Private lessons are managed end to end: students book and pay online, and each lesson can carry rich content (notes, sheet music, audio and video) that stays available to the student afterwards. Workshops, both online and in-person, have their own listings, booking and attendee management.

Beyond one-off lessons, teachers can create structured courses, and students work through them in a built-in learning management system that tracks their progress.

Payments are taken automatically through Stripe, and cancellations and refunds are handled according to the platform's terms and conditions, so the teacher doesn't have to chase money or process refunds by hand.

A built-in finance area shows teachers the income from their private lessons, workshops and courses. They can also log expenses against their teaching practice and export a year-end summary, ready for their own tax return or to send to an accountant.

Although it started with the recorder, nothing in the platform is tied to one instrument. It works for a single teacher or a team of teachers, for any instrument or subject, and can run either as a shared SaaS platform or as a customised installation for an individual teacher.

Some of what it does is only visible once a visitor creates an account and logs in — the student dashboard, lesson booking flow, and purchased digital content all sit behind authentication, which is exactly the kind of functionality a link to the live site alone can't demonstrate.

The same underlying platform, reconfigured rather than rebuilt, is what powers Polyphonica Recorder Trio's concert and workshop booking — see that case study for how the system adapts to an ensemble rather than a single tutor.