I may have once expressed a vague interest and now the internet follows me around with ads for masterclass.com – For those unaware, it’s a collection of assorted clever people doing ‘Here’s how I do things’ instructional videos – as diverse as Deadmau5 doing EDM, Gordon doing shouty cooking and Malcolm Gladwell doing non-fiction writing. There seems to be a good amount of good stuff in there, though I’m rarely interested in buying one person’s lessons, but they do do an ‘All you can eat for a year’ kind of subscription which sometimes appeals – although at £170 or so, it had better be good.

Anyway, I see there’s currently a ‘buy one and give the same to a friend’ offer – which will still set me back the same amount so actually it’s no cheaper, but I could give one away to, er, someone who also wants to learn negotiation from a CIA officer or guitar with Tom Morello…

Given that I might actually have time to watch some of these… has anyone here taken the plunge?

I’ve never used it but I think it has been discussed before in regards to electronic music and the conclusion was it was pants.  But like a lot of these things it might depend on the individual course. In I’ll see if I can find the previous discussion

That’s be handy. Obviously now since having clicked a Youtube ad recently I’m being offered a course by America’s best ballerina 🙂

There does seem to be that much on there that if I could watch 17 different lessons during a year and get a tenner’s worth of education of enjoyment out of each, then that’s probably worthwhile…

Can’t find it. Iirc it was a thread about learning music rather than about masterclass in particular. Maybe someone else will spot this

Thanks for looking. I’m not after really learning things per se, but I reckon an hour a night watching, say Steve Martin talk about comedy will be far more interesting/useful than watching Jeremy Clarkson or my usual diet of Fail videos 🙂

I get the impression that that is pretty much the market it is covering

I figure there’s worse things to spend money and not use. Hell I just spent half-of-the-new-plastic-frame-I-fancy on a turbo trainer I’m not even sure I’ll unbox. [boris better tell us not to go outside even if the house catches fire]

Given the lack of notification icons anymore I’m not sure it’s obvious but, “you have mail”

Thinking about It again this morning i realised i had seen it on reddit rather than on here and it was about filmmaking rather than music but i got the sentiment right (i think).  It seems to be effective as motivational rather than just educational so not really worth it if you want to really learn something fron scratch but great if you already know something and want another angle or insight.  The yearly sub seems to be the one to get

The thread i had seen was this one

https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/8kkwwa/anyone_tried_these_masterclasses_thoughts_on_value

@chipps

I got this for my wife for Christmas and ended up with a licence myself as it was also then on a buy one get one free.

I’ve been working through the Aaron Franklin BBQ school which has been really interesting. My wife has been going through the creative writing ones and she’s really enjoying those.

Content seems to be updating reasonably regularly and it works well on a laptop, phone or streamed to a Chromecast. So overall I’d say it’s not cheap, but it is reasonable quality and decent things are not usually cheap, but you know that 🙂

Also, it makes a nice alternative to more Netflix of an evening at the moment.

Had a similar question about Skillshare …