In an exclusive first time event, MetalSucks conducted an interview about another website. Bandhappy is a new platform that offers students and teachers — many of whom are famous metal musicians — the opportunity to connect directly for one-on-one, personalized video lessons, and also provides a platform for setting up in-person lessons while on tour. The founder Matt Halpern — who also happens to be and the drummer for PERIPHERY and known for his dynamic tutorials — recently spent some time with MetalSucks to talk about Bandhappy, what it took to get it going, what makes it unique, and much more. Check out some extracts from that interview below:

Where exactly are you right now in terms of the launch of Bandhappy?

Right now we are going to start slowly getting the initial bands, teachers and musicians that we’ve already reached out to registered and all set up on the site. Then we’re going to start slowly activating profiles. We’re not going to just throw everybody on all at once. What we’re seeing right now is that there is a shit ton of people that are headed this way that have already registered as teachers. We have thousands of requests for teachers at this point. We have hundreds of teachers who have expressed interest or are already on board. We’re really going to ramp this thing up somewhat slowly so that we can really gauge how many users that there are and make sure that there is enough supply and demand for our students and our teachers.

Yeah. What are some of the teachers that you have?

All the bands that are in that video, there’s at least one member if not more from each of those bands. There are musicians literally across all genres that we are recruiting for this. Well, really not recruiting, we’re kind of showing them what we are doing and it kind of filled itself. We don’t have any exclusive deals with anybody; we don’t want to. We simply feel like this is a tool that can be added to their toolbox, so to speak, so they can use it to either connect with their fans in a different way or supplement their income by teaching. In that regard, not only do I have the musicians that I know from the guys in the bands that you see in the video, each one of those musicians is sending the other guys [from their respective bands] and I’m getting hit up by managers and getting hit up by different companies that are basically saying “I have these artists” or “I’m in a band”. It’s from all over the place and from all sorts of genres at this point. I guess initially that video should kind of speak for itself for who is involved, but that’s not to say [exactly] who will be involved. There are a bunch of other great artists that are really outside the metal world. We’re pretty impressed that they are involved but I can’t say their names yet.

Sure. What exactly is the revenue model? Do students pay each teacher directly or does it go through Bandhappy and then Bandhappy takes a cut and then it goes onto the teachers?

Students pay whatever the rates are that the teachers want to charge. The teachers can set their own rates and set their own schedules. Once the student pays, it goes to Bandhappy and then we hold it until the lesson is completed and then we make our disbursements to our teachers.