[JoshTriplett]

This sounds incredible, and I'd love to try it!

A few immediate thoughts:

As a student, I don't care about a two-sided platform (which is what it looks like you're trying to build). I want to sign up for vetted piano lessons through your site, and purchase a USB midi adapter that you recommend. As a short-term MVP, perhaps point people to a known-working adapter on a site with an affiliate program. Long-term you might consider finding a company willing to sell one white-label and put your logo and website on it, but that's a lot less important than everything else you're building so put it off for a while.

Also, for the first handful of lessons and for subsequent practice, it'd be awesome if you had automated, pre-recorded lessons available, to get the basics down, or to train things like reading sheet music at speed.

[semi-extrinsic]

Regarding "USB MIDI adapter": Actually USB MIDI is the lowest common denominator for MIDI keyboards. If you pick up any used MIDI keyboard less than 10 years old, it will have USB. Something in the $40-$60 range on Craigslist is perfect.

The big choice for the beginner (or anyone) is how many keys do you want, and have space for? It goes all the way from 25 keys up to 88.

Then going up in price, models will start to include (in random order) old 5-pin MIDI in and out, velocity sensitive keys, (semi-)weighted keys, aftertouch, inputs for foot controllers, pads/knobs/faders for controlling a DAW, built-in sequencers, external sync in/out, CV and gate outputs for interfacing with modular gear, etc..

[jacquesm]

If you are at all serious about piano I would recommend getting an 88 key keyboard with half decent keys. Anything less you'll outgrow in the first few months and you will be learning to properly orient yourself. On a smaller keyboard you're going to mess up your 'South Sight' and your 'North Sight' because you will train yourself to orient on the edges of your smaller keyboard. As soon as you sit down behind a proper piano you'll be confused.

Good keyboards aren't expensive any more, the simplest Yamaha, Casio and Roland that qualify for serious study are all around $500 if you shop around a bit and if you go for second hand can be had for half that. You'll very quickly match that in lesson costs so if you can afford the one you probably can afford the other.

You don't need sequencers, aftertouch, built in DAWs or controlling an external one etc, those are not aimed at piano students. Can be fun but complete luxury.

[vidarh]

But it's a space where more expensive older hardware might still be worth it. E.g. my full piano size 24 year old Yamaha w/velocity sensitive keys and pedals still works flawlessly and the current version of it is still expensive new (at least from the point of view of a casual user...)

It's now connected via a cheap USB adapter to my Chromebook (biggest issue: latency of the - mostly Android - apps) planning to connect it to my Linux box instead.

[fakedang]

Honest question, is there any possibility of easily installing Linux on a Chromebook?

[JoshTriplett]

You can always install Linux on any Chromebook, or install a Linux VM (but that may not make it trivial to directly attach devices). To the best of my knowledge 100% of Chromebooks are fully supported.

[vidarh]

No idea, I suspect that will very much depend on the manufacturer. I've never looked into it.

[DonHopkins]

Old schoolers use USB to ADB plus ADB to MIDI! ;)

https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/usb-adb-converters-t...

https://www.reddit.com/r/synthesizers/comments/3wefun/midi_i...

[secabeen]

That already exists, and is a relatively robust market, with multiple providers. I used https://pianomarvel.com/ for a while during COVID with some success.

[keycon]

Excellent suggestions, these ideas ring true to me. I'm going to start exploring this direction for growing the platform. Thank you very much!