In this guide
What is Yousician?
Yousician is a music-learning app that teaches users how to play various instruments, including piano, guitar, bass guitar and singing. Users learn by watching step-by-step video tutorials and playing along, with the device’s microphone picking up the sound of the instrument and giving feedback on the user’s performance.
Yousician is available on iOS, Android, Windows and macOS. A free version of Yousician exists, which limits how long the app can be used each day and only allows access to selected lessons and songs. A paid subscription can also be purchased, with paid versions of Yousician being separated into 3 tiers:
Premium – £4.99/month. Can learn 1 instrument. Access to 900+ lessons & songs.
Premium+ – £7.49/month. Can learn 5 instruments. Access to 10,000+ lessons & songs.
Premium+ Family – £11.24/month. Can learn 5 instruments. Access to 10,000+ lessons & songs. 4 accounts.
Yousician offers a 7-day free trial for all plans, meaning you can try the app out yourself before committing to a year subscription.
How it works
Yousician is able to teach users how to play instruments by listening to their playing through the device’s microphone. The app will hear how you are playing and whether you are getting the chords correct and can provide real-time feedback on your performance.
Users can play along with video lessons and try playing popular songs and then be shown how they performed. The app tracks progress, and users need to earn stars in order to unlock some harder lessons and songs. This adds a sense of progression to the learning experience and encourages users to keep practicing.
Yousician users can follow their friends’ profiles, which allows them to see what songs their friends are learning and will put them on a leaderboard with them. Users must practice their instrument to move up the leaderboard, so this is a good motivator. Besides this there are no social features, so users cannot message each other.
Yousician has collaborated with popular artists Metallica and Billie Eilish, giving users the opportunity to learn their songs on various instruments and receive words of advice from the artists themselves through pre-recorded videos. Billie Eilish is particularly popular with younger audiences, and being able to play her songs may encourage children to use the app more regularly.
In addition to these artists’ catalogues, Yousician has over 10,000 other songs in its song library. There are songs from all the most popular music genres, and a mix of songs from older artists like Bob Dylan, and contemporary ones like BLACKPINK. With this wide range of tunes, your child will be able to find songs they’d like to play regardless of their music taste.
If you have a younger child, Yousician also offers a Children Songs library, which contains popular nursery rhymes like Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Mary Had A Little Lamb.
Yousician parental controls
Yousician does not have any parental controls. The app is rated as being suitable for children aged 4+ in the app store, but Yousician’s terms of service state that only people aged 13 and older can use the platform. Because of this, anyone who is using Yousician should be old enough for the content on it.
Parents can still keep an eye on how their children use the app by subscribing to a family plan, which gives a family multiple accounts and allows each person on the plan to view other family members progress. Using this, parents can check that children are actually practicing regularly.
If you don’t want your child to be able to follow other users, you can set their profile to private by toggling the Make your profile private option off in the profile settings. However, this must be done by the owner of the account, so your child could just turn this setting back on at any time.
If you want to set time limits on the app in order to avoid excessive screen time, these limits must be set directly in the device’s settings. Learn how to set parental controls on your child’s devices.
Benefits of Yousician
- Helps users learn how to play a range of instruments
- Interactive learning experience with feedback on performance
- Wide range of songs, both new and old hits
- Reward system and leaderboards keep users motivated
What to watch out for
As Yousician is rated as being suitable for users aged 4+, there is very little content on the platform that is inappropriate for young people. Any songs with explicit lyrics will have the expletives bleeped out. However, there are still songs which reference violence and alcohol.
If you are not happy with your child listening to and learning songs which feature these topics, you can keep an eye on what songs they listen to through your family plan on the app. You can also try talking to them about what kind of music they are learning to find out if the songs are appropriate for their age.
When practicing their instrument, your child may become frustrated if they feel like they are not making progress. Finding a wellbeing app for them to use can help them keep a positive mindset and prevent them from becoming too stressed or annoyed by the learning curve involved in playing a new instrument.