Our Story
Made by music tutors for music tutors
Meet the founder
'Hi, I am Petru Cotarcea, the founder of MuseCool. I was born in Bucharest, Romania, where I was able to learn to play the violin for free at the local music school, for which I will forever be grateful!
I moved to the UK to study at Chet's in Manchester, followed by the Royal Academy of Music in London - where I started MuseCool in the final year of my studies in 2017, hoping to itch a living on the side.
After almost a decade, and teaching over 100k lessons through our tutors, I've seen first hand how a majority of students give up pretty early on; and through some further digging, I've traced this to one core variable - the fact that most students don't practice well (or more likely, ever!) at home - and this in turn leads to a lack of progress, and general disengagement with the learning process, often followed by giving it up.
I thought - if we manage to somehow make practice more fun and relevant, yet based on what tutors actually want their students to work on, a lot would be better with the music world.
And this is what The Muse was built to address, in the hope that it will greatly improve the lives of piano tutors and the students they work with.'
Started as a local London music school
MuseCool began as a music school in 2017 in London. Since then, we've grown to become the largest private music school for kids in the UK.
WHAT WE LEARNED NEXT
Tutors did not need technology to teach for them.They needed it to take care of everything around the lesson.
Practice was the first problem we set out to solve. But after working alongside tutors across more than 100,000 lessons, we saw the wider picture: brilliant teaching was being surrounded by the same five frustrations.
- 01
Chasing payments and navigating awkward cancellations
Get paid.
- 02
Buying, searching for, downloading and printing music
Get sheet music.
- 03
Reconstructing lesson notes and sending recaps afterwards
Get lesson summaries.
- 04
Students forgetting what they had been asked to practise
Get students practising.
- 05
Finding dependable new students and teaching work
Get teaching opportunities.
Those five frustrations became the five things The Muse is built to handle.You do the teaching. The Muse supports the rest.
But one principle was non-negotiable from the beginning.
Our Philosophy
Built to support tutors. Never to replace them.
Music learning is an inherently human endeavour.
But much of that learning happens beyond the lesson itself.
Technology can help carry the teacher's guidance into those moments.
Therefore, technology should follow the teacher - never take their place.
We believe the future of music education should empower great teachers - not make them obsolete. In a world increasingly shaped by AI, we want to help protect and strengthen the role of tutors by making them more effective, more connected to their students, and more impactful beyond the lesson itself.
The Muse was not built to automate teaching, but to support the parts of learning that tutors have traditionally struggled to reach: home practice, consistency, motivation, parent understanding, and between-lesson engagement. The teacher remains at the centre of the learning experience.
The Muse should simply help their teaching carry further.
We worked with thousands of children
Before building The Muse, we spent years teaching children directly - in homes, schools, studios, and even on a converted double-decker bus built to bring free music education to children who might not otherwise access it. That work, later captured in the short film The Most Beautiful Noise, shaped how we think about technology in education: music lessons are not just about learning notes; they are about confidence, trust, patience and being encouraged by someone who knows when to push and when to reassure. That is why The Muse is designed to protect and extend the human act of teaching - not replace it.
Meet the team behind the Muse
