15 ms·

MasterClass is seizing its moment

185 points by gdubs 6y ago

gdubs 6y ago
Interesting article worthy of a discussion. But I also have a selfish motive – I've been really intrigued by some of the teasers and I'm wondering if people have done any of the courses and have an opinion on whether or not it was worth the money.
- Jac21 6y ago
  Which teasers/subjects in particular pique your interest? As an amateur musician, I've found it's been well-worth the subscription I split with a friend during a recent pricing special due solely to having certain classes inspire me through some ruts. Otherwise, I'd imagine it'd be a hard sell without having a field you're wanting to dig into in mind that doesn't already have a bevy of content on the site.
- thrav 6y ago
  I’ve watched the Judd Apatow one with my wife a bit, so it’s the only one I can comment on, but here’s where I think it shines: 1. Exposure to his story. How did he get there. What did it take? How long? How did he pay his dues? How did he get lucky? How did he make his luck? If I were a teenager, this would’ve been HUGE. It isn’t a blue print, but it gives you an idea of what these people go through, and how many years it takes to get where they are. 2. Exposure to his methods. How does he come up with jokes? How does he shape a story? How does he harness inspiration? How does he workshop and develop those ideas? This is valuable to anyone interested in doing what he does. It’s a playbook for getting started. It has the potential to shatter the whole, “I don’t even know where to start” barrier. “Start writing down funny things that happen” is obvious as hell, but hearing that’s exactly how one of the best in the world does it, from the horses mouth, gives it a different weight. 3. It’s entertaining. Even if you’re not intending to write comedy, it’s kinda like watching an episode of VH1 Storytellers. You get to hear great stories about how things, that you’re intimately familiar with, happened. 4. Pro-tips. This kinda goes with 3, but there are some real gems. He’ll say something casually about how he does X, and you just think, “duh. Of course that’s how I should be doing X. Can’t believe I never thought of that.” Think about times in your life when you’ve learned something small from a peer and had your mind blown that you’ve not been doing it that way your whole life. Those are peppered throughout. 5. Demystification of the “master”. I actually think this might be the important thing in all of this. These people are just people. They worked hard and put themselves out there. They fail a lot; probably more than most. I had the same feeling arriving in a start up office in Silicon Valley from a Texas childhood. I had pulled back the curtain, and it was just more people. Sure, they know a lot about machine learning, but that’s not because they’re superhuman, it’s because they spent the last 10 years (PhD) studying that extremely specific topic. Seeing how human these people are makes me feel like there are a lot of people I know who are every bit as capable of writing funny things as he is. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for them, or that they’ll ever reach his level, but it makes it feel like if they just reprioritized a few things and did it — they might surprise themselves. —— So, will he teach you the intricacies of script structure, dialog, timing, etc... no. Will he spark enough creativity and interest that you get off your butt, start writing some stuff, and go find the content that will teach you those things? I think so. In my mind, Masterclass is like a tasting menu of hobbies / alternative professions. It gives you a feel for what’s involved and what it takes, and then the person can decide if that’s the rabbit hole they’d like to go down.
- powersnail 6y ago
  Depends on what you want to get from the class and what that amount of money means to you. For example, the violin class by Perlman that I took. Judging by the content alone, I wouldn't say it's worth $90, since it's not that deep, and a lot of the information is online for free already. On the other hand, I can comfortably afford it. I'll happily pay that 90+ bucks just to hear Perlman talk about violin for a few hours, regardless of the depth. I'd say the same for the writing courses. Not deep, no special secrets, not going to make you a master. But if you just want to hear them talk about their own crafts and processes, it's also a bearable price.
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  As others have alluded, the quality varies significantly. But, with the sales they run regularly, being able to get a $90/ year subscription that covers all these classes, chances are you will more than get your monies worth (and can then cancel in year two).
fermienrico 6y ago
Every MasterClass series I’ve watch (I’ve watched about half a dozen), they seem to be more of an entertainment thing than a professional class. There is a general lack of rigor and details that just can’t be conveyed in a single course.
- donretag 6y ago
  I really do not think the Chris Hadfield series on Space Exploration will help you become an astronaut.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Yea! I watched it on a plane and thought it was more of Educational Entertainment than anything else. It had a place but not as a source of learning.
    - danielodievich 6y ago
      SNL take on the MasterClass lampooned it perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U31rKSYX07E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U31rKSYX07E. Having said that, I watched a couple of Neil Gaiman's lectures and because I love Neil's work, I loved what he had to say.
      - jessriedel 6y ago
        (That's a great John Mulaney impression.)
- diehunde 6y ago
  I think that's what a masterclass is. If I see a flyer saying some X professional musician is giving a masterclass I'm assuming it's going to be 2 or 3 hours of just ideas, tips, methods and his general vision about music.
- thundergolfer 6y ago
  It really looks just like infotainment in a new fancy wrapping.
psychometry 6y ago
The fact that they chose Dan Brown of all people to do a writing workshop does not inspire confidence.
- volkk 6y ago
  depends on how you view writing. he might not be your average book nerd's cup of tea, but his astonishing success is nothing to balk at. i love all sorts of authors, and maybe he might not write the best literary works of art, its entertaining as shit and i devoured his books in my teenage years.
- lovegoblin 6y ago
  Who? The renowned author Dan Brown?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kleiba 6y ago
  Well, you could either go the route of a Nobel laureate in literature that you've never heard of, or for a guy with commercial success. From Wikipedia: His books have been translated into 57 languages and, as of 2012, have sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and Inferno, have been adapted into films. It all depends on what your goals are. No-one is forced to take any of the offered classes.
- runevault 6y ago
  They have a LOT of writing classes. Neil Gaiman, David Mamet, Judy Blume, Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood... Yes they have Dan Brown, but if you want to study writing there are some fantastic ones (Gaiman, Mamet, JCO, Billy Collins, Balldacci were all fantastic)
  - ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
    I haven’t seen the other ones but the Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman ones are great.
surfpel 6y ago
MasterClass is somewhat paradoxical in my opinion. They’re attempting to reach a wide audience (people who aren’t technically proficient in the respective fields of say cooking or music) but they’re framing it as a “masterclass” which is a class given by a master of a topic to students who are proficient in their topic. Seems like more entertainment than an actual masterclass which I would prefer
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I've seen similarly named classes taught by university professors who were former highly respected practitioners. They're often taught as light intro/survey lectures, usually a couple hours of lecture. I think that's the type of "masterclass" that the brand is named after. In the context where I saw these classes, they're very much a sort of "edutainment" to either market the university or to give alumni a taste of the college academic life they remember. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think having an unfamiliar subject presented to you in an enjoyable and understandable way is actually a really good thing for expanding your perspective. But that's very different from taking a class to gain proficiency. Of course there's also the other type of "master class" where a master teaches the nuances that set the masters apart from the "merely proficient".
- crooked-v 6y ago
  > but they’re framing it as a “masterclass” which is a class given by a master of a topic to students who are proficient in their topic But they're not? They're using the word as a trademark, sure, but the actual service is obviously intended for people of a variety of skill levels, as thematically connected by being taught by well-known 'masters' (such as the Penn and Teller magic lessons). In other words, when I buy an Apple computer and it doesn't include any apples in the box, that's not 'paradoxical'.
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    I don't think that's quite the same. Apples are very obviously not computers, while MasterClass's offering is extremely similar to what a "masterclass" is, which leads me to read it as meaning "we offer a service that maps to what our name is".
ipnon 6y ago
Chris Voss' negotiation class has easily justified the $100 per year subscription. Kasparov's chess class is valuable, but it wouldn't be worth it on its own. Paul Krugman's economics class is interesting but pedantic. It only serves as a basic introduction, but does so in a field in which the introduction is barely useful. Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution University course fills the gap between beginner and intermediate economics for free.
- medell 6y ago
  What does Voss' class have that's not in his book?
  - ipnon 6y ago
    Live demonstrations The book was too abstract for me. Seeing Voss in the act allowed me to imitate him.
    - tianzhi 6y ago
      I'll have to check it out then. I liked the book, but so much of negotiation is body language and tone.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Hmm will check out the Chris Voss course
- benatkin 6y ago
  I'm curious why "getting your cup of coffee at Starbucks is a negotiation". https://www.masterclass.com/classes/chris-voss-teaches-the-art-of-negotiation https://www.masterclass.com/classes/chris-voss-teaches-the-a... (first time watching it there, been shown it 100+ times on YouTube)
- blub 6y ago
  What $100 subscription? In Europe it's 200 EUR per year and it's not possible to buy individual lessons.
galkk 6y ago
I had a chance to watch ~half of Kasparov’s class on Masterclass. For casual player (1850 lichess in blitz and bullet, 77 percentile), it was close to useless. Too high level and pretty unstructured.
- seppin 6y ago
  My experience watching carlos santana's class on guitar was similarly disappointing. He just keeps talking about "finding your sound" then plays a few notes. Not really helpful.
  - bsder 6y ago
    The only person I have seen do really good videos for guitar is Jimmy Bruno. And, eventually, even he gave up. Doing really good videos for training is really hard and takes a lot of work. Fundamentally, most people good at it conclude that online isn't worth it and that meatspace pays better. Covid has flipped that around for a bit, but I suspect it will hold true again within a couple months.
  - ssttoo 6y ago
    Same with Hans Zimmer. Useless. However Tom Morello’s was cool. Both technical and nerdy as well as inspirational. And I’m not a big Rage against the machine fan or anything.
- ll931110 6y ago
  Actually I find it the opposite: the material for this particular class is too simple and helps nothing if you already have some good chess knowledge and want to bring to expert/master level. (Granted there are plenty of other resources for such, including a number of Kasparov books)
andygcook 6y ago
I thought this thread on MasterClass's coordinated distribution strategy was interesting and worth reading: https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool/status/1265382628724740098 https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool/status/126538262872474009... The fact MasterClass ranks first in Google for "what is a shallot?" is pretty surprising.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  How many people who don't know what a shallot is are going to drop $80 or whatever on a Gordon Ramsay masterclass?
  - esrauch 6y ago
    Seems like there's two possible answers where this makes perfect sense: - maybe many people who don't know what a shallot is would drop $80 for a Ramsay masterclass (kind of like how Gyms primarily profit from non-users). - that many people who search for "what is a shallot" in fact do already know what a shallot is and are interested in gaining advanced/deeper information about the subject.
    - jaquers 6y ago
      can confirm #1, fell for it... edit: not that I don't know what a shallot is X-)
  - luhn 6y ago
    If you're Googling "what is a shallot," it means you don't know much about cooking and are trying to learn more. Seems like the perfect target market for an online cooking class.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      I agree with GP though, if you don't know what a shallot is, it's not likely you have sufficient interest to pay money to learn about cooking. Obviously it's regional, but from my UK perspective shallots are not exotic. I'm not aware that they even suffer from multiple names as do spring/salad/green onions/scallions. Echalions of course, but that's a subcategory. If shallots are unfamiliar, again, UK, you've spent little time even in supermarket vegetable aisles or restaurants and, surely, are therefore unlikely to actually part with cash a cooking class?
seppin 6y ago
I would have thought that MasterClass would struggle because of the cultural "anti-expert" zeitgeist we have right now. Glad i'm wrong.
- heisenzombie 6y ago
  What happens when an immovable "anti-expert" zeitgeist meets an unstoppable "pro-celebrity" culture?
  - ternaryoperator 6y ago
    You get the Kardashians
    - seppin 6y ago
      That's less of a cross between expert/celebrity and more pure celebrity (pure in the sense that they are famous because they are famous).
  - seppin 6y ago
    Good point. These are more celebrity interviews (that make you feel like you're spending your time wisely by learning) than they are expert lesions.
- dicytea 6y ago
  Can elaborate more about what you mean by "anti-expert" zeitgeist?
  - prawn 6y ago
    Propensity of the public to latch on to celebrity ra-ra (shock jocks, influencers, etc) before they listen to a category expert. Of course, these Masterclass identities are as much celebrities as they are experts.
    - seppin 6y ago
Cyclone_ 6y ago
Why on earth does the headline on NYTimes say "only school left" as if there are no other online schools running.
- superhuzza 6y ago
  >It’s the Year 2120. MasterClass Is the Only School Left. It's a joke prediction about the year 2120, not 2020.
- arielserafini 6y ago
  "It’s the Year 2120. MasterClass Is the Only School Left."
oh_sigh 6y ago
MasterClass in the past has benefited from famous/accomplished people feeling they want to "give back" to the world some lessons they've learned. The standard model is something like $100k up front + 30% of sales. If someone's net worth is in the dozens of millions or more, this really isn't moving the needle, so the major incentive has to be the altruism. However, will people continue to choose to be altruistic on this platform, when it is turning the creators into the ultra wealthy? One might be less inclined to altruism if you're actually giving a +1 to the world but a +50 to a random company who hosts a website. Many of the people that have done Masterclasses could make an arbitrary individual wealthy and famous (e.g. Spielberg could just say "<random no-name filmmaker> is my protege and all films I work on will be co-directed by them"). The question is how many people are going to make that choice for Masterclass when they could just as well host it on their own website, or put it on their own channel on youtube, etc.
- ybot 6y ago
  I don't actually think the celebrities are contributing purely out of an altruistic desire to 'give back'. I think that's _great_ marketing by Masterclass, but the primary thing celebrities get by associating themselves with Masterclass is helping continue to build their own brand. Masterclass has positioned its self as "the best in the world teaching their craft", so by agreeing to be on their platform a celebrity is getting publicity that reinforces the idea that they're the best in the world at that thing, and that they're still socially/culturally relevant.
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Not purely. But there are 1000 things they could be doing. Taking the time to create thoughtful instructional videos is hard. I admire them for sharing what they know.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      You're forgetting that people want to be in an exclusive club, and if masterclass is able to really get 'masters' instead of jokesters, then being selected is worth the ego trip; plus if you get 30% of revenue, and you feel like you're god's gift, then you assume that number will be super duper high as well. Personally I just love their name. Brilliant marketing. I'm starting to see it used outside of their product.
0898 6y ago
The Kevin Spacey one is genuinely brilliant. They've taken it down, but older accounts like mine still have it.
- davidsawyer 6y ago
  What was it about?
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    "Choosing to live his life as a gay man..."
- kecupochren 6y ago
  There is also this ...bay
Jugurtha 6y ago
I learned a lot about writing better _software_ and product development from David Mamet's masterclass on writing _screenplays_. He has a no-bullshit, get to the point, approach that I liked. He has points on what should a story accomplish, where the responsibilities of a character end, and the nature of the job being to entertain, not inform or lecture. It can directly be transferable to feature creep, single responsibility, etc.
aksss 6y ago
MasterClass is using celebrity and production value as an attractant, but accomplishment in a field does not necessarily equate to expertise and certainly doesn't imply any significant teaching ability. MasterClass brings you close to recognized greats, but to an extent your learning will be more about _them_ and only tangentially about the field of interest. There are some MasterClass episodes conveying very practical knowledge - typically the cooking ones - but again I'd call this a different thing than really learning about cooking (theory, law, etc). Systemically understanding a field of interest is a different endeavor requiring more rigor. The Great Courses product is probably the more rigorous (categorically similar) educational tool in comparison to MasterClass. It has less production value (though more than sufficient) and the lectures are from obscure though academically recognized authorities rather than curated celebrities. _IF goal is to:_ Really learn a new field or skill during the pandemic = The Great Courses. Watch autobiopic on recognized authority = MasterClass. For the record, I have both and am affiliated with neither.
- jkhdigital 6y ago
  +1 for The Great Courses, at least the few that I’ve picked up on Audible. I listened to a course entitled Law School for Everyone that is 25 hours of four different law professors giving a very clear and coherent introduction to law. It was worth at least 10x the cost of the Audible credit, and I probably only used 1/2 credit after picking it up during a 2-for-1 sale.
  - mlacks 6y ago
    Thanks, didn't realize the great courses were available on audible. Reduces the friction just that much more.
    - aksss 6y ago
      They also have a Roku channel and an iPhone app. The iphone app lets you do audio only to cut down on BW. But with a course like Understanding Greek and Roman Technology (one of my all-time faves), the video is pretty invaluable. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-roman-technology https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-...
thrower123 6y ago
The fuck is MasterClass? This is a submarine advertisement, right?
HumblyTossed 6y ago
What I don't understand is just because someone is highly skilled at something (Ron Howard) doesn't make them as good a teacher of said something. Maybe Masterclass is helping them put their teaching information together? But they sell it like they're putting together the best of the best teachers, and I don't know if that's the case.
sholladay 6y ago
I took Gordon Ramsay's MasterClass on cooking and it helped me in some small but surprisingly useful ways. The knife skills part helped me be safer and faster in the kitchen, for example. It was also a good refresher on certain ingredients. In some ways, I learned more basic and fewer skills than I expected, and there was some random stuff in there that you won't really need unless you plan on opening a restaurant. Yet, at the same time, it was refreshing to have a high quality, practical course that I could pause, rewind, and re-watch until I had mastered all of the little details. My cooking has definitely improved because of it and it was worth the cost.
- ddoolin 6y ago
  Few years on and I still use what I learned in Ramsay's "How to Cook the Perfect Steak" video on YouTube. Maybe cooking is just inherently more practical even without all the theory (?).
- dub 6y ago
  For knife skills, I enthusiastically recommend this free online course. It was recommended to me by a professional chef, and I'd bet most professional chefs would get something (or many things) out of it: https://shop.mybluprint.com/cooking/classes/complete-knife-skills/35338 https://shop.mybluprint.com/cooking/classes/complete-knife-s...
- polytely 6y ago
  For anyone else reading this I highly recommend Ramsay's youtube videos where he tries to cook a meal in 10 minutes, while his daughters film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwk0e3wgoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwk0e3wgoM
Syzygies 6y ago
I've nearly subscribed multiple times to MasterClass, then I watch a demo again. We all have different needs for affirmation to information. My fear from what I've seen is that MasterClass is too heavy on affirmation. I already know I can do it, that's not what I need.
salimmadjd 6y ago
Masterclass is such a brilliant business model. They're charging close to the same fees as Netflix, yet their production costs are very little. They don't need to bet millions on some show or pilot and become a flop. They can quickly churn out classes with very limited budget compare to Netflix's budget and keep their paying customers happy.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I bet most of their creators sell their services as part of a profit sharing agreement too. Gordon Ramsey already creates content for YouTube, because he has to in order to stay relevant. For him, Masterclasses are (probably) just better paying YouTube videos.
kevindeasis 6y ago
I'd like to see how much they're paying the actors and how they make the courses
GoodJokes 6y ago
Masterclass is a straight up grift and this is obviously a paid advertisement in the NYT. Cmon, lets be real.
dehrmann 6y ago
Not quite the right place for this comment, but it's timely, and I wanted to share it. Over the long weekend, I started bookmarking and closing my months-long collection of browser tabs. The number of "to read" and "to watch" links vastly outnumbered the "to dos" (I don't mean that like it's a chore, but related to an activity). I accidentally focused too much on learning over doing. Don't watch these classes just to watch these classes. Watch them to enrich an active part of your life.
madballster 6y ago
Celebrity teaching such as Masterclass reminds me of unsubstantiated self-help teaching promises. It's all about marketing, about luring customers with supposedly easy-to-achieve results such as "Rewire your brain in 7 days" or "Learn how grand master chess players think in 12 easy lessons". Or - God forbid - "Teach yourself expert Go/Rust/Python/C++ programming in 21 days". Problem is: It is never easy to achieve a high level, at anything. And that in turn leads one to Peter Norvig's (posted here many times) excellent Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years blog post https://norvig.com/21-days.html https://norvig.com/21-days.html
alangibson 6y ago
Chapo Trap House had an interesting take of MasterClass. In their view it's basically a way of alleviating imposter syndrome. It's real function is to give people some sort of credential, and thus permission. Watch a MasterClass on photography, now you have permission to be a photographer.
badrabbit 6y ago
You should be familiar with "survivor bias" before paying for their service.
code4tee 6y ago
Will admit to bing one of those that watch some of the adverts to the end. It’s certainly compelling and engaging filmmaking. The content is good. Criticisms that the content is often shallow and more about the person than the topic are fair and valid. Your won’t really learn much actual skills apart from maybe the cooking ones. It’s interesting and inspiring content regardless. You can find comparable stuff on YouTube if you know where to look and are willing to filter though things (lots of great biographic speeches on there and such) but I get their biz model and it makes sense. It’s basically super premium YouTube. They’ve attracted a very diverse and impressive mix of talent too.
Optimal_Persona 6y ago
FWIW, I learned quite a bit from deadmau5' MasterClass, in terms of "general approach", "inspiration", and "very specific, immediately applicable techniques that I probably wouldn't find elsewhere". Maybe he's an outlier? I had been producing music for 12 years when I took the class, and I had 30+ years of musical and recording experience to draw from. Also, I use the same software (Ableton Live) as deadmau5 did in the tutorial, so most of the technical elements were immediately usable.

185 points by gdubs 6y ago

Interesting article worthy of a discussion. But I also have a selfish motive – I've been really intrigued by some of the teasers and I'm wondering if people have done any of the courses and have an opinion on whether or not it was worth the money.

Jac21 6y ago
Which teasers/subjects in particular pique your interest? As an amateur musician, I've found it's been well-worth the subscription I split with a friend during a recent pricing special due solely to having certain classes inspire me through some ruts. Otherwise, I'd imagine it'd be a hard sell without having a field you're wanting to dig into in mind that doesn't already have a bevy of content on the site.
thrav 6y ago
I’ve watched the Judd Apatow one with my wife a bit, so it’s the only one I can comment on, but here’s where I think it shines: 1. Exposure to his story. How did he get there. What did it take? How long? How did he pay his dues? How did he get lucky? How did he make his luck? If I were a teenager, this would’ve been HUGE. It isn’t a blue print, but it gives you an idea of what these people go through, and how many years it takes to get where they are. 2. Exposure to his methods. How does he come up with jokes? How does he shape a story? How does he harness inspiration? How does he workshop and develop those ideas? This is valuable to anyone interested in doing what he does. It’s a playbook for getting started. It has the potential to shatter the whole, “I don’t even know where to start” barrier. “Start writing down funny things that happen” is obvious as hell, but hearing that’s exactly how one of the best in the world does it, from the horses mouth, gives it a different weight. 3. It’s entertaining. Even if you’re not intending to write comedy, it’s kinda like watching an episode of VH1 Storytellers. You get to hear great stories about how things, that you’re intimately familiar with, happened. 4. Pro-tips. This kinda goes with 3, but there are some real gems. He’ll say something casually about how he does X, and you just think, “duh. Of course that’s how I should be doing X. Can’t believe I never thought of that.” Think about times in your life when you’ve learned something small from a peer and had your mind blown that you’ve not been doing it that way your whole life. Those are peppered throughout. 5. Demystification of the “master”. I actually think this might be the important thing in all of this. These people are just people. They worked hard and put themselves out there. They fail a lot; probably more than most. I had the same feeling arriving in a start up office in Silicon Valley from a Texas childhood. I had pulled back the curtain, and it was just more people. Sure, they know a lot about machine learning, but that’s not because they’re superhuman, it’s because they spent the last 10 years (PhD) studying that extremely specific topic. Seeing how human these people are makes me feel like there are a lot of people I know who are every bit as capable of writing funny things as he is. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for them, or that they’ll ever reach his level, but it makes it feel like if they just reprioritized a few things and did it — they might surprise themselves. —— So, will he teach you the intricacies of script structure, dialog, timing, etc... no. Will he spark enough creativity and interest that you get off your butt, start writing some stuff, and go find the content that will teach you those things? I think so. In my mind, Masterclass is like a tasting menu of hobbies / alternative professions. It gives you a feel for what’s involved and what it takes, and then the person can decide if that’s the rabbit hole they’d like to go down.
powersnail 6y ago
Depends on what you want to get from the class and what that amount of money means to you. For example, the violin class by Perlman that I took. Judging by the content alone, I wouldn't say it's worth $90, since it's not that deep, and a lot of the information is online for free already. On the other hand, I can comfortably afford it. I'll happily pay that 90+ bucks just to hear Perlman talk about violin for a few hours, regardless of the depth. I'd say the same for the writing courses. Not deep, no special secrets, not going to make you a master. But if you just want to hear them talk about their own crafts and processes, it's also a bearable price.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
As others have alluded, the quality varies significantly. But, with the sales they run regularly, being able to get a $90/ year subscription that covers all these classes, chances are you will more than get your monies worth (and can then cancel in year two).

fermienrico 6y ago

Every MasterClass series I’ve watch (I’ve watched about half a dozen), they seem to be more of an entertainment thing than a professional class. There is a general lack of rigor and details that just can’t be conveyed in a single course.

donretag 6y ago
I really do not think the Chris Hadfield series on Space Exploration will help you become an astronaut.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Yea! I watched it on a plane and thought it was more of Educational Entertainment than anything else. It had a place but not as a source of learning.
  - danielodievich 6y ago
    SNL take on the MasterClass lampooned it perfectly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U31rKSYX07E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U31rKSYX07E. Having said that, I watched a couple of Neil Gaiman's lectures and because I love Neil's work, I loved what he had to say.
    - jessriedel 6y ago
      (That's a great John Mulaney impression.)
diehunde 6y ago
I think that's what a masterclass is. If I see a flyer saying some X professional musician is giving a masterclass I'm assuming it's going to be 2 or 3 hours of just ideas, tips, methods and his general vision about music.
thundergolfer 6y ago
It really looks just like infotainment in a new fancy wrapping.

psychometry 6y ago

The fact that they chose Dan Brown of all people to do a writing workshop does not inspire confidence.

volkk 6y ago
depends on how you view writing. he might not be your average book nerd's cup of tea, but his astonishing success is nothing to balk at. i love all sorts of authors, and maybe he might not write the best literary works of art, its entertaining as shit and i devoured his books in my teenage years.
lovegoblin 6y ago
Who? The renowned author Dan Brown?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kleiba 6y ago
Well, you could either go the route of a Nobel laureate in literature that you've never heard of, or for a guy with commercial success. From Wikipedia: His books have been translated into 57 languages and, as of 2012, have sold over 200 million copies. Three of them, Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and Inferno, have been adapted into films. It all depends on what your goals are. No-one is forced to take any of the offered classes.
runevault 6y ago
They have a LOT of writing classes. Neil Gaiman, David Mamet, Judy Blume, Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Collins, Margaret Atwood... Yes they have Dan Brown, but if you want to study writing there are some fantastic ones (Gaiman, Mamet, JCO, Billy Collins, Balldacci were all fantastic)
- ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
  I haven’t seen the other ones but the Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman ones are great.

surfpel 6y ago

MasterClass is somewhat paradoxical in my opinion. They’re attempting to reach a wide audience (people who aren’t technically proficient in the respective fields of say cooking or music) but they’re framing it as a “masterclass” which is a class given by a master of a topic to students who are proficient in their topic. Seems like more entertainment than an actual masterclass which I would prefer

munchbunny 6y ago
I've seen similarly named classes taught by university professors who were former highly respected practitioners. They're often taught as light intro/survey lectures, usually a couple hours of lecture. I think that's the type of "masterclass" that the brand is named after. In the context where I saw these classes, they're very much a sort of "edutainment" to either market the university or to give alumni a taste of the college academic life they remember. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think having an unfamiliar subject presented to you in an enjoyable and understandable way is actually a really good thing for expanding your perspective. But that's very different from taking a class to gain proficiency. Of course there's also the other type of "master class" where a master teaches the nuances that set the masters apart from the "merely proficient".
crooked-v 6y ago
> but they’re framing it as a “masterclass” which is a class given by a master of a topic to students who are proficient in their topic But they're not? They're using the word as a trademark, sure, but the actual service is obviously intended for people of a variety of skill levels, as thematically connected by being taught by well-known 'masters' (such as the Penn and Teller magic lessons). In other words, when I buy an Apple computer and it doesn't include any apples in the box, that's not 'paradoxical'.
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  I don't think that's quite the same. Apples are very obviously not computers, while MasterClass's offering is extremely similar to what a "masterclass" is, which leads me to read it as meaning "we offer a service that maps to what our name is".

ipnon 6y ago

Chris Voss' negotiation class has easily justified the $100 per year subscription. Kasparov's chess class is valuable, but it wouldn't be worth it on its own. Paul Krugman's economics class is interesting but pedantic. It only serves as a basic introduction, but does so in a field in which the introduction is barely useful. Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution University course fills the gap between beginner and intermediate economics for free.

medell 6y ago
What does Voss' class have that's not in his book?
- ipnon 6y ago
  Live demonstrations The book was too abstract for me. Seeing Voss in the act allowed me to imitate him.
  - tianzhi 6y ago
    I'll have to check it out then. I liked the book, but so much of negotiation is body language and tone.
hckr_news 6y ago
Hmm will check out the Chris Voss course
benatkin 6y ago
I'm curious why "getting your cup of coffee at Starbucks is a negotiation". https://www.masterclass.com/classes/chris-voss-teaches-the-art-of-negotiation https://www.masterclass.com/classes/chris-voss-teaches-the-a... (first time watching it there, been shown it 100+ times on YouTube)
blub 6y ago
What $100 subscription? In Europe it's 200 EUR per year and it's not possible to buy individual lessons.

galkk 6y ago

I had a chance to watch ~half of Kasparov’s class on Masterclass. For casual player (1850 lichess in blitz and bullet, 77 percentile), it was close to useless. Too high level and pretty unstructured.

seppin 6y ago
My experience watching carlos santana's class on guitar was similarly disappointing. He just keeps talking about "finding your sound" then plays a few notes. Not really helpful.
- bsder 6y ago
  The only person I have seen do really good videos for guitar is Jimmy Bruno. And, eventually, even he gave up. Doing really good videos for training is really hard and takes a lot of work. Fundamentally, most people good at it conclude that online isn't worth it and that meatspace pays better. Covid has flipped that around for a bit, but I suspect it will hold true again within a couple months.
- ssttoo 6y ago
  Same with Hans Zimmer. Useless. However Tom Morello’s was cool. Both technical and nerdy as well as inspirational. And I’m not a big Rage against the machine fan or anything.
ll931110 6y ago
Actually I find it the opposite: the material for this particular class is too simple and helps nothing if you already have some good chess knowledge and want to bring to expert/master level. (Granted there are plenty of other resources for such, including a number of Kasparov books)

andygcook 6y ago

I thought this thread on MasterClass's coordinated distribution strategy was interesting and worth reading: https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool/status/1265382628724740098 https://twitter.com/TheCoolestCool/status/126538262872474009... The fact MasterClass ranks first in Google for "what is a shallot?" is pretty surprising.

oh_sigh 6y ago
How many people who don't know what a shallot is are going to drop $80 or whatever on a Gordon Ramsay masterclass?
- esrauch 6y ago
  Seems like there's two possible answers where this makes perfect sense: - maybe many people who don't know what a shallot is would drop $80 for a Ramsay masterclass (kind of like how Gyms primarily profit from non-users). - that many people who search for "what is a shallot" in fact do already know what a shallot is and are interested in gaining advanced/deeper information about the subject.
  - jaquers 6y ago
    can confirm #1, fell for it... edit: not that I don't know what a shallot is X-)
- luhn 6y ago
  If you're Googling "what is a shallot," it means you don't know much about cooking and are trying to learn more. Seems like the perfect target market for an online cooking class.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    I agree with GP though, if you don't know what a shallot is, it's not likely you have sufficient interest to pay money to learn about cooking. Obviously it's regional, but from my UK perspective shallots are not exotic. I'm not aware that they even suffer from multiple names as do spring/salad/green onions/scallions. Echalions of course, but that's a subcategory. If shallots are unfamiliar, again, UK, you've spent little time even in supermarket vegetable aisles or restaurants and, surely, are therefore unlikely to actually part with cash a cooking class?

seppin 6y ago

I would have thought that MasterClass would struggle because of the cultural "anti-expert" zeitgeist we have right now. Glad i'm wrong.

heisenzombie 6y ago
What happens when an immovable "anti-expert" zeitgeist meets an unstoppable "pro-celebrity" culture?
- ternaryoperator 6y ago
  You get the Kardashians
  - seppin 6y ago
    That's less of a cross between expert/celebrity and more pure celebrity (pure in the sense that they are famous because they are famous).
- seppin 6y ago
  Good point. These are more celebrity interviews (that make you feel like you're spending your time wisely by learning) than they are expert lesions.
dicytea 6y ago
Can elaborate more about what you mean by "anti-expert" zeitgeist?
- prawn 6y ago
  Propensity of the public to latch on to celebrity ra-ra (shock jocks, influencers, etc) before they listen to a category expert. Of course, these Masterclass identities are as much celebrities as they are experts.
  - seppin 6y ago

Cyclone_ 6y ago

Why on earth does the headline on NYTimes say "only school left" as if there are no other online schools running.

superhuzza 6y ago
>It’s the Year 2120. MasterClass Is the Only School Left. It's a joke prediction about the year 2120, not 2020.
arielserafini 6y ago
"It’s the Year 2120. MasterClass Is the Only School Left."

oh_sigh 6y ago

MasterClass in the past has benefited from famous/accomplished people feeling they want to "give back" to the world some lessons they've learned. The standard model is something like $100k up front + 30% of sales. If someone's net worth is in the dozens of millions or more, this really isn't moving the needle, so the major incentive has to be the altruism. However, will people continue to choose to be altruistic on this platform, when it is turning the creators into the ultra wealthy? One might be less inclined to altruism if you're actually giving a +1 to the world but a +50 to a random company who hosts a website. Many of the people that have done Masterclasses could make an arbitrary individual wealthy and famous (e.g. Spielberg could just say "<random no-name filmmaker> is my protege and all films I work on will be co-directed by them"). The question is how many people are going to make that choice for Masterclass when they could just as well host it on their own website, or put it on their own channel on youtube, etc.

ybot 6y ago
I don't actually think the celebrities are contributing purely out of an altruistic desire to 'give back'. I think that's _great_ marketing by Masterclass, but the primary thing celebrities get by associating themselves with Masterclass is helping continue to build their own brand. Masterclass has positioned its self as "the best in the world teaching their craft", so by agreeing to be on their platform a celebrity is getting publicity that reinforces the idea that they're the best in the world at that thing, and that they're still socially/culturally relevant.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Not purely. But there are 1000 things they could be doing. Taking the time to create thoughtful instructional videos is hard. I admire them for sharing what they know.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    You're forgetting that people want to be in an exclusive club, and if masterclass is able to really get 'masters' instead of jokesters, then being selected is worth the ego trip; plus if you get 30% of revenue, and you feel like you're god's gift, then you assume that number will be super duper high as well. Personally I just love their name. Brilliant marketing. I'm starting to see it used outside of their product.

0898 6y ago

The Kevin Spacey one is genuinely brilliant. They've taken it down, but older accounts like mine still have it.

davidsawyer 6y ago
What was it about?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  "Choosing to live his life as a gay man..."
kecupochren 6y ago
There is also this ...bay

Jugurtha 6y ago

I learned a lot about writing better _software_ and product development from David Mamet's masterclass on writing _screenplays_. He has a no-bullshit, get to the point, approach that I liked. He has points on what should a story accomplish, where the responsibilities of a character end, and the nature of the job being to entertain, not inform or lecture. It can directly be transferable to feature creep, single responsibility, etc.

aksss 6y ago

MasterClass is using celebrity and production value as an attractant, but accomplishment in a field does not necessarily equate to expertise and certainly doesn't imply any significant teaching ability. MasterClass brings you close to recognized greats, but to an extent your learning will be more about _them_ and only tangentially about the field of interest. There are some MasterClass episodes conveying very practical knowledge - typically the cooking ones - but again I'd call this a different thing than really learning about cooking (theory, law, etc). Systemically understanding a field of interest is a different endeavor requiring more rigor. The Great Courses product is probably the more rigorous (categorically similar) educational tool in comparison to MasterClass. It has less production value (though more than sufficient) and the lectures are from obscure though academically recognized authorities rather than curated celebrities. _IF goal is to:_ Really learn a new field or skill during the pandemic = The Great Courses. Watch autobiopic on recognized authority = MasterClass. For the record, I have both and am affiliated with neither.

jkhdigital 6y ago
+1 for The Great Courses, at least the few that I’ve picked up on Audible. I listened to a course entitled Law School for Everyone that is 25 hours of four different law professors giving a very clear and coherent introduction to law. It was worth at least 10x the cost of the Audible credit, and I probably only used 1/2 credit after picking it up during a 2-for-1 sale.
- mlacks 6y ago
  Thanks, didn't realize the great courses were available on audible. Reduces the friction just that much more.
  - aksss 6y ago
    They also have a Roku channel and an iPhone app. The iphone app lets you do audio only to cut down on BW. But with a course like Understanding Greek and Roman Technology (one of my all-time faves), the video is pretty invaluable. https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-roman-technology https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/understanding-greek-and-...

thrower123 6y ago

The fuck is MasterClass? This is a submarine advertisement, right?

HumblyTossed 6y ago

What I don't understand is just because someone is highly skilled at something (Ron Howard) doesn't make them as good a teacher of said something. Maybe Masterclass is helping them put their teaching information together? But they sell it like they're putting together the best of the best teachers, and I don't know if that's the case.

sholladay 6y ago

I took Gordon Ramsay's MasterClass on cooking and it helped me in some small but surprisingly useful ways. The knife skills part helped me be safer and faster in the kitchen, for example. It was also a good refresher on certain ingredients. In some ways, I learned more basic and fewer skills than I expected, and there was some random stuff in there that you won't really need unless you plan on opening a restaurant. Yet, at the same time, it was refreshing to have a high quality, practical course that I could pause, rewind, and re-watch until I had mastered all of the little details. My cooking has definitely improved because of it and it was worth the cost.

ddoolin 6y ago
Few years on and I still use what I learned in Ramsay's "How to Cook the Perfect Steak" video on YouTube. Maybe cooking is just inherently more practical even without all the theory (?).
dub 6y ago
For knife skills, I enthusiastically recommend this free online course. It was recommended to me by a professional chef, and I'd bet most professional chefs would get something (or many things) out of it: https://shop.mybluprint.com/cooking/classes/complete-knife-skills/35338 https://shop.mybluprint.com/cooking/classes/complete-knife-s...
polytely 6y ago
For anyone else reading this I highly recommend Ramsay's youtube videos where he tries to cook a meal in 10 minutes, while his daughters film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwk0e3wgoM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwk0e3wgoM

Syzygies 6y ago

I've nearly subscribed multiple times to MasterClass, then I watch a demo again. We all have different needs for affirmation to information. My fear from what I've seen is that MasterClass is too heavy on affirmation. I already know I can do it, that's not what I need.

salimmadjd 6y ago

Masterclass is such a brilliant business model. They're charging close to the same fees as Netflix, yet their production costs are very little. They don't need to bet millions on some show or pilot and become a flop. They can quickly churn out classes with very limited budget compare to Netflix's budget and keep their paying customers happy.

mywittyname 6y ago
I bet most of their creators sell their services as part of a profit sharing agreement too. Gordon Ramsey already creates content for YouTube, because he has to in order to stay relevant. For him, Masterclasses are (probably) just better paying YouTube videos.

kevindeasis 6y ago

I'd like to see how much they're paying the actors and how they make the courses

GoodJokes 6y ago

Masterclass is a straight up grift and this is obviously a paid advertisement in the NYT. Cmon, lets be real.

dehrmann 6y ago

Not quite the right place for this comment, but it's timely, and I wanted to share it. Over the long weekend, I started bookmarking and closing my months-long collection of browser tabs. The number of "to read" and "to watch" links vastly outnumbered the "to dos" (I don't mean that like it's a chore, but related to an activity). I accidentally focused too much on learning over doing. Don't watch these classes just to watch these classes. Watch them to enrich an active part of your life.

madballster 6y ago

Celebrity teaching such as Masterclass reminds me of unsubstantiated self-help teaching promises. It's all about marketing, about luring customers with supposedly easy-to-achieve results such as "Rewire your brain in 7 days" or "Learn how grand master chess players think in 12 easy lessons". Or - God forbid - "Teach yourself expert Go/Rust/Python/C++ programming in 21 days". Problem is: It is never easy to achieve a high level, at anything. And that in turn leads one to Peter Norvig's (posted here many times) excellent Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years blog post https://norvig.com/21-days.html https://norvig.com/21-days.html

alangibson 6y ago

Chapo Trap House had an interesting take of MasterClass. In their view it's basically a way of alleviating imposter syndrome. It's real function is to give people some sort of credential, and thus permission. Watch a MasterClass on photography, now you have permission to be a photographer.

badrabbit 6y ago

You should be familiar with "survivor bias" before paying for their service.

code4tee 6y ago

Will admit to bing one of those that watch some of the adverts to the end. It’s certainly compelling and engaging filmmaking. The content is good. Criticisms that the content is often shallow and more about the person than the topic are fair and valid. Your won’t really learn much actual skills apart from maybe the cooking ones. It’s interesting and inspiring content regardless. You can find comparable stuff on YouTube if you know where to look and are willing to filter though things (lots of great biographic speeches on there and such) but I get their biz model and it makes sense. It’s basically super premium YouTube. They’ve attracted a very diverse and impressive mix of talent too.

Optimal_Persona 6y ago

FWIW, I learned quite a bit from deadmau5' MasterClass, in terms of "general approach", "inspiration", and "very specific, immediately applicable techniques that I probably wouldn't find elsewhere". Maybe he's an outlier? I had been producing music for 12 years when I took the class, and I had 30+ years of musical and recording experience to draw from. Also, I use the same software (Ableton Live) as deadmau5 did in the tutorial, so most of the technical elements were immediately usable.