Launched in 2007, JamPlay has about 25,000 current paid subscribers and is on track for more than $4 million in revenues this year, said co-founder Kevin Wimer of Beavercreek. The site has helped 357,000 people learn to play guitar over the past seven years, he said.
“It is growing year over year and has been a pretty good success, especially for a tech company in Dayton, Ohio,” Wimer said.
JamPlay is an Ohio LLC co-founded by Wimer and Chris Dawson, also of Beavercreek, and Jeff Booth of Loveland, Colo.
The three partners started the website in February 2007 with $30,000 of their own money, but they weren’t expecting much success given the track record of many dot-com ventures. By April of that year, they had recouped their investment.
“We realized pretty quickly that we were on to something,” Wimer said.
JamPlay now has 15 full-time employees, including several contractors, most of whom work remotely from home offices.
Wimer, Dawson and another employee live and work in the Dayton area. Booth and the majority of the staff are in Colorado, where the guitar lesson videos are produced for high-definition streaming on the website.
Noisecreep, AOL Music’s hard rock news and media website, ranks JamPlay at No. 2 among the best websites for learning guitar. GuitarLessonReviews.com ranks JamPlay at No. 1.
Guitar Player magazine Editor-in-Chief Michael Molenda said online guitar lessons, including free YouTube videos, are an “overflowing market” that offer a wealth of educational opportunities for players of many styles and commitment levels.
“Cost-wise, JamPlay is one of the more expensive options, but they offer a lot of usable tools for learning, and the sizzle factor of being able to take lessons from guitar stars such as Steve Stevens, Lita Ford, Kaki King, and Tobin Abasi,” Molenda said.
While those features may not intrigue casual learners, “the JamPlay instructors and the technology really nail it for those willing to invest the effort to seriously improve their guitar chops,” he said.
JamPlay offers 4,500 online lesson videos from 80 paid instructors who are a mix of veteran private guitar teachers, college-level music professors, and celebrity guitarists who include Guns ‘N Roses’ Bumblefoot, Mike Mushok of Staind, Nick Cantanese of Black Label Society, and Steve Stevens of Billy Idol’s band.
Premium users pay $19.95 a month to access the website’s content. Last month, JamPlay launched a free membership option that gives new users limited access to the site without requiring their credit card information.
Wimer is a 2002 Beavercreek High School graduate who learned web development on his own. He started as JamPlay’s main programmer but now focuses on marketing, business development and project management.
Dawson graduated from the University of Dayton in 2005 with degrees in entrepreneurship and management information systems. He is responsible for JamPlay’s visual design, music licensing and accounting.
Wimer said none of the partners knew how to play guitar when they started the website. “It actually worked out to our advantage because we basically structured a site for someone to learn guitar,” he said.
JamPlay added bass guitar lessons to the site last year, and plans to add drums, keyboard and vocal instruction in 2015.
The company recently launched iPad and Android mobile applications, and will expand to streaming media services such as Xbox, Roku and Amazon Fire TV in the coming months to further grow its brand.
“Part of our plan is you don’t have to necessarily sit in front of a laptop or computer. If you have a Chromecast or an Amazon Fire TV, you can watch our lessons on your TV,” Wimer said.
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