The code is not a mandate, but a statement of a common practice in the industry. It is a matter of courtesy, really.Brahms’s main source of income was revenue he earned from teaching piano lessons. He invested his meager income in the stock market and this was the only reason he lived a financially comfortable life in old age. As for his compositions, forget it. Their aesthetic value as musical creations is indisputable; their economic value in his life, however, was very low.

Even as a performer, he could never make a go of it. His true love Clara travelled all over Europe – even though she was the mother of eight kids! – and packed the concert halls. People paid her astonishing amounts of money to play. The crowds went wild. But Johannes? No such luck. He never achieved any fame as a performer. No, he was a piano teacher. He knew it, and he was sad about it.

As a teacher, however, he also produced some incredible books of student exercises. You look at them today and wonder how anyone could play them at all given their technical demands. It just goes to show you that no matter how phenomenal you are, you can never stop practicing, doing exercises, and studying under the great masters.

I point out this tiny snippet from musical history to observe this: as difficult as it is to believe, it all happened without the Federal Trade Commission!

Harassing Teachers

Of course any student can change teachers at any time.What’s the FTC got to do with it? Well, early in 2016, the agency took it upon itself to intervene heavily in the market for piano teaching.The FTC sent a small nonprofit – the Music Teachers National Association – a letter accusing it of promoting anticompetitive trade practices. This is all because their manual discourages teachers from aggressively poaching students from other teachers.

The code is not a mandate, but a statement of a common practice in the industry. It is a matter of courtesy, really. It’s never been enforced. It doesn’t have to be. These teachers depend on the support of the community for recitals, ideas, referrals, and general support. They are a happy community and this kind of behavior, by tradition, is regarded as unsporting.

Of course any student can change teachers at any time, as you might know if you have ever been part of this community. You can leave one teacher and go to another. If you do that, however, you must be nice about it, just so that you can keep peace in the community. Another factor here is that every teacher has his or her own method and pacing. Hopping from teacher to teacher isn’t always the best way to learn.

In any case, the FTC seized on the sentences in the Association’s manual and declared it to be incompatible with the bureaucracy’s version of what constitutes genuine competition. Their economists have models, don’t you know, and these models determine what is good for students and teachers. The Association – which no piano teacher has to join in order to teach – immediately offered to take the sentence out of its code. That wasn’t enough.

As Kim Strassel reports in the Wall Street Journal:… read more here