Retention in music rentals and lessons comes with its own set of challenges, from parents who have no frame of reference for what a normal rental journey looks like to the narrow window where most quitting decisions actually get made. We recently hosted a panel with Jake Connelly, president of Connelly Music, and Peter Sides, president of RM Sides, to talk through retention in music rentals and lessons. Here are five takeaways from that conversation.
Retailers tend to assume parents understand what a typical rental journey looks like, since it's easy to assume everyone's had some experience with music growing up. The data says otherwise.
Only a small share of Americans currently play an instrument, and just a minority have ever played one at all
Most renting parents have no personal frame of reference for whether their kid struggling in month two is normal or a reason to quit
Without that context, parents tend to default to guessing, or assume the worst and pull their kid before a music educator or the retailer ever hears there's an issue
The takeaway: if you're not actively setting expectations with parents early and often, you're leaving their read on "is this working" up to chance.
Industry dropout rates average 40 to 50 percent, and that's not a number that improves on its own. A student with an informed, engaged parent behind them has a much better shot at pushing through a rough patch than one whose parent has no idea what to expect, which is exactly why setting expectations with parents early and often matters so much.
The takeaway: retention has to be treated as a front-loaded problem. The first 30 to 90 days matter disproportionately more than anything after, because that's the window where most quitting decisions actually get made.
No single staff member can personally check in with every renter, especially at multiple locations. The panelists on the call who've made real progress here weren't doing it through more effort. They were doing it through structured, automated communication that still felt personal, built around a few core pieces:
Pre-built journeys or templates specific to the instrument and stage of ownership, rather than one generic welcome sequence for everyone
The ability to customize that structure with a retailer's own branding, links, and voice
A way for renters to ask questions and get answers without waiting on a phone call
The takeaway: whatever tool or process you use, the goal is the same. Personalized, proactive communication at a volume no single employee could sustain manually. This is the exact structure we built Polly, your product's AI Advisor, around, so if you don't have something like it in place yet, it's worth seeing what one looks like before building it from scratch.
RM Sides has been running Polly since expanding from one store to six over the past several years. The numbers below combine their results with data from BluStream's broader base of music renters:
A 20 percent improvement in rental retention meant 377 additional renters carrying into the next semester, worth an estimated $15,080 a month in added rental revenue at an average $40 per renter
A return rate holding around 40 percent, below industry headwinds even before accounting for the improvement
More than 250 support inquiries redirected away from phone calls and into self-serve conversation
Retention on non-sales messaging alone can run as high as 96 percent, meaning families often stay subscribed even after their student stops playing, a sign the relationship itself holds value beyond the transaction
The takeaway: these are the specific metrics worth tracking regardless of what system a retailer uses: retention rate change, renters retained, average spend per renter, and support volume shifted away from staff time.
The panelists were consistent on this point, independently of each other. They recommended starting small, testing with one store or one segment before rolling out a new retention approach to the full customer list.
Start with one store or one segment, not the whole business
Look for a low-commitment way to test the approach before scaling it
Expect the biggest gains to show up in edge cases you wouldn't think to plan for upfront, like adjusting messaging timing for delayed deliveries so a family isn't asked about an instrument that hasn't arrived yet
The takeaway: the risk of testing a more structured retention approach is generally lower than retailers assume, and the data from a small pilot is usually enough to justify expanding it.
The through-line across all five takeaways is that retention isn't really a marketing problem or a product problem. It's an information problem. Parents who don't know what to expect make worse decisions than parents who do, and closing that gap consistently, at scale, is what separates retailers who hold onto students from retailers who don't.
You don't need to solve all of this at once. Start with one store, one segment, or even one journey, and see what it does to your numbers before expanding further.
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