This past summer, one of the most significant names in music publishing, Alfred Music, was acquired by Boulder, Colorado-based Peaksware, parent company of MakeMusic, among others. MMR recently had the opportunity to speak with company CEO, Gear Fisher, about the recent developments, what it all means for the future of Alfred Music, and where he sees Peaksware going in the coming months and years.
For any of our readers not fully up to speed, can you briefly provide some background regarding both Peaksware and yourself?
The founding story goes back to 1999 when myself, Dirk Friel, and Joe Friel started a software company to help coaches and athletes train and prepare for endurance events like triathlon, running, and cycling. We created Training- Peaks.com which was an online version of Joe’s best-selling books on how to train, The Triathletes Training Bible, The Cyclist’s Training Bible, et cetera. It launched as a subscription business in October 2000 and grew organically until 2007 when we received an email from a customer interested in investing. That customer was Andy Stephens of Launch Equity. Around the same time, Andy invested in MakeMusic, then a public company, and that started our relationship which exists today. Around 2007 we also created Peaksware, which was really just meant to be an umbrella which would oversee multiple companies. In 2014 Andy asked our team and I to take over running MakeMusic, essentially to re-build the company in the image of TrainingPeaks, which had seen significant growth. We eventually moved MakeMusic and TrainingPeaks underneath the Peaksware umbrella, and have now brought Alfred Music into the same fold.
My personal background is mainly rooted in technology. I graduated in 1991 from Colorado State University with a degree in Civil Engineering. After six years of working for a high-tech water resources firm, I changed careers and became a software programmer for an Internet consulting firm in 1997. The Web was exploding at this time and I learned a lot about tech, people, and business. I moved to another Internet consulting firm in 1999, and by 2001, TrainingPeaks was growing enough that I quit my day job and went full time hoping to grow TrainingPeaks into a real business.
Can you discuss how the acquisition of Alfred Music came about? What was the catalyst?
It was no secret that they faced some significant financial challenges. MakeMusic has been working with Alfred Music for over 10 years, and had developed a great relationship. As the financial challenges increased, we saw an opportunity to step in and help. Alfred Music is responsible for about 50 percent of the music used within SmartMusic, our music practice software platform, and we saw many more strategic opportunities, were we to join forces. Over the course of about 1.5 years, we put together a plan to have Alfred Music join Peaksware, and we closed the deal on July 31st.
For longtime dealers of and partners with Alfred Music, some of the big questions are: What’s changing and what’s going to the stay the same? Of the previous primary officers and staff, who’ll be sticking around longterm? Will the facilities/HQ be moving?
I greatly value our dealer network – it’s one of the reasons we were so interested in Alfred Music. They have key longterm relationships with thousands of teachers, students, and parents. Given that Alfred and MakeMusic are highly focused on the academic music industry, I feel it’s critical to support the dealer in the value chain to the consumer. I really don’t anticipate much change from the dealer’s point of view.
What are your goals for Alfred Music – and Peaksware – going forward?
We are out to build the next generation music publishing and practice platform. Our goal is to build an open platform where all publishers and composers can add their content, musicians and students have access to that content, and instructors can communicate and engage with everyone in the ecosystem. We will wrap that with the best practice and teaching tools, and truly create the world’s best practice platform. It’s Alfred Music’s mission to help people experience the joy of making music, and MakeMusic’s mission is to transform how music is taught, learned and performed, and we’re going to do just that.
Given the drastically changing nature of all things “print,” where do you see Alfred Music – and, really, all print music publishing houses – in a few years?
I think print has a long future ahead. Is it a growing business? Probably not. But it’s a fairly stable one in the academic market. I think it will somewhat mirror the newspaper and magazine industry and print will find a balance alongside digital music consumption. There are great use cases for print, and great use cases for digital, we’re going to have very strong offerings for both.
Are there any developments on the horizon for Alfred Music and Peaksware that you’d like to share with our readers?
We’ve had a lot going on, and now MakeMusic is in the midst of launching an all new version of SmartMusic which is Web-based, so Chromebook schools and anyone with an Internet connection can access it via the cloud. We also just released a major upgrade to Finale and we have exciting new front-list content coming from Alfred. So, you could say we’re quite busy!
Thanks for taking the time to chat, Gear. Any final thoughts?
I’m looking forward to learning more about the industry and bringing our dream to reality. It’s a privilege to wake up every day and be part of something so many people are passionate about. We are changing how people learn, teach and play music, and I’m very proud of our team and their accomplishments so far. We have so much more to share with the world, stay tuned!
