How We Choose Our Picks
On some city pages you will see a short list of picks above the full directory. This page says exactly how a teacher gets on that list.
The short version: it is never paid, and it is never a judgment about who is the better drummer.
The criteria
A teacher can be picked if their listing verifiably meets all three:
1. They teach beginners, including people starting later in life. Stated on their own site, in their own words. A studio whose materials are aimed entirely at children and competitive percussion is an excellent studio and a poor match for a 44-year-old starting from zero. That is a fit judgment, not a quality one.
2. They offer a trial or single lesson. No package required to find out whether you get along. Fit between a student and a teacher matters more than credentials at the beginner stage, and you cannot assess fit from a bio. A teacher who requires a ten-lesson commitment up front is asking you to bet before you can see the cards.
3. They respond within 48 hours. Measured from our own outreach when we contact them to verify the listing. The most common complaint about finding a music teacher is that nobody replies. A teacher who answers is worth more to a beginner than a more decorated teacher who does not.
That is the whole list. Three checkable things.
Why picks do not appear on every city page
Picks only appear when a city has enough verified teachers for a shortlist to mean anything, and enough of them differ meaningfully from each other.
If a city has four teachers, a list of "our picks" is just the directory with extra steps, and it implies a selection we did not actually make. On those pages you get the full list and no picks. Same reasoning as the Price Index threshold: a shortlist drawn from too small a pool is a decoration, not information.
What can never affect a pick
- Money. No teacher, school or franchise can pay to be picked, featured, or ranked higher. There is no advertising product on these pages. This is committed to permanently in the Teacher Bill of Rights.
- Whether they use our app. We make Drum Coach. A teacher who has never heard of it is exactly as eligible as one who recommends it to every student. We do not track this and we would not use it if we did.
- Star ratings. We do not host them. See the Bill of Rights for why.
- How good a drummer they are. We are not qualified to rank that from a website, and neither is anyone else who claims to.
What a pick is not
It is not a recommendation that you choose them. It means their published information matches what a beginner usually needs. It cannot tell you whether you will click with them in a room, which is the thing that actually decides whether lessons work.
It is not a ranking. Picks are not ordered best to worst. Teachers who are not picked are not worse; most often they simply do not publish enough for us to verify the criteria, or they do not offer a trial lesson.
It is not permanent. Criteria are re-checked when a listing is re-verified. A teacher who stops offering trials stops being picked.
If you are a teacher
If you meet the criteria and are not picked, it is almost always because we could not verify one of them from your site. Claim your listing and tell us; claiming is free and always will be.
If you think the criteria themselves are wrong, we would genuinely like to hear it: support@upbeat.studio. They are published here so they can be argued with.
Changelog
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 2026-07-29 | Criteria published. |