Unlike most musicians, Alain Merville is a creative who has leveraged his skillset to help others in his career to grow through a nurturing program. Alain Merville is the CEO and founder of YousicPlay.com. This platform allows music students worldwide to access the most excellent musicians and comprehensive lessons to all talent and experience levels. This way, he helps artists break into the competitive industry, helping them develop their skills through advanced training.
Alain is also a professor of music at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston. He brings a wide range of experience in the music field to his work, being an artist, manager, and cultivator of talent. He has a powerful musical journey, taking up several roles at a go and the stronghold of any project he brings about. Alain thrills crowds with charisma and authenticity, infusing gospel, playing piano, and spreading harmony through his music. He has gone against the odds to achieve the incredible.
Alain Merville Background
Alain is an immigrant from Haiti who moved to the US at the age of 7. Having no music background in the family, he rocked his musical journey making the most discoveries. Merville first learned to play the piano at the age of 14, taking lessons for one year before playing gigs in New York at the age of 15. He polished his skills when he attended Berklee College of Music. He got opportunities to work as a Musical Director for artists in New York, where he arranged and produced music. He then started posting videos of himself playing piano, explaining the different concepts he played. A primary Gospel Piano e-learning platform discovered his videos and invited him to feature in one of their courses, which spotlighted the gospel keyboard world. This notoriety pushed him to give piano lessons via Skype.
Career Highlights
In 2015, the ambitious, skilled, and young black entrepreneur started Nate Bash Band company named after his son, Nathan. It was a live music entertainment firm that provided live music for weddings, college parties, and corporate events. He ran the Nate Bash Band (NBB) for three years, where he recruited, auditioned, and trained his band members. He oversaw over 25 clients a year, and in every gig, he was the emcee, lead keyboardist, live sound engineer, point of contracts for clients, van driver, and vendor. Following his passion and ambition to make considerable strides in music, he learned to take on multiple roles at once. After creating his first online piano instructional course and making returns of over $50,000 in the first few months from an investment of $1,500, the idea of YousicPlay struck. It was in his 2nd year running Nate Bash Band.
A more prominent company in the same live music entertainment industry acquired NBB in 2018. As part of the acquisition, the company assigned Alain the Director of Operations role. For two years, he worked at the company, taught at Berklee College of Music, acted as a bandleader in a local church, and kept working on YousicPlay. In 2019, together with his team, they recorded their first online course. In their first year, YousicPlay had a massive organic growth in students and community. 95% of their students chose to recommend YousicPlay to a friend. The success led him to fully transition from Director of Operations to running YousicPlay, being his mainstream income.
Achievements
Alain has also worked hard for YousicPlay, and in such a short duration, his team has expanded to a COO, CTO, in-house video editors, graphic designers, admins, marketing team, and on-boarded Grammy Winning World-class instructor like Ne-Yo. They were also capable of paying one of their instructors over $50,000 in course sales revenue in the first two months of his course release during Covid-19 when musicians were no longer able to do gigs and tours. Alain and his team are ready to use this momentum to scale and disrupt the entire E-learning industry. He has worked with top-notch clients like Ne-Yo, Lindsey Stirling, Cory Henry, and Arturo Sandoval.
Conclusion
Alain Merville has indeed done exceptional work to get to where he is in piano playing, leading a band, and training young artists. And it is indeed by helping others that you grow. To get more insights into music, you can follow YousicPlay on Instagram or LinkedIn.