By now, we’re all familiar with Zoom and its popularity. Starting with the spring of 2020, the platform has amassed an incredible number of new users. Most importantly, it allowed people to continue not only their work but education as well. Even some of the most prestigious universities have started using it, ultimately continuing with lectures and exams. In the following article, we’ll discuss why using Zoom for music lessons is not all that ideal as you might have thought.
From our perspective, the most important thing is that music lovers of all ages were enabled to continue with their music education. What’s more, 2020 saw people of all ages starting to learn how to play an instrument. And this is all thanks to Zoom, which gathered over 2.2 million users in the first two months of 2020 alone. And in April of that same year, it reached a head-spinning number of 300 million users, growing from its initial base of 10 million users in December 2019.
So Zoom is awesome, right? Well, if you were to dig in below the pretty-looking surface, you’d find some pretty shady business. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Zoom and explain why it’s not a good solution for music students and music teachers.
Security Issues
Ever since the spring of 2020, Zoom slowly started getting into the spotlight for some of its unflattering aspects. In particular, there have been some security issues that the more tech-savvy people were more informed about.
So did they change anything? No, not really. As Tom’s Guide reports, Zoom’s end-to-end encryption isn’t really end-to-end. In fact, a lot of group conversation participants were able to see a lot about you. Not to mention all of those annoying (but also somewhat comedic) “Zoom bombing” incidents where random users jumped into public meetings, sharing profanities.
The platform’s privacy issues have remained very problematic. Technically, Zoom was able to do whatever they want with the data you provided them with. And although some of the stuff has been fixed since 2020, they still have a lot of stuff to catch up with.
For instance, in July 2021, Zoom settled one class-action lawsuit. For their flaky security protocols, they’re now obliged to pay around $85 million. These will be distributed among a portion of its user base.
In April 2021, it was revealed that Zoom was open to hacking attacks. In fact, some of the flaws were so bad that at the Pwn2Own contest, some researchers showed that it’s possible to hijack personal computers through Zoom’s security flaws. At this point, it is believed that the issue has finally been solved.
Another serious issue here is that they’re not exactly fair when it comes to their users’ data. Although the app can be used for free, they found ways to profit off of it. It’s not exactly the best thing for a tech company to sell their users’ data to other businesses for ad targeting, isn’t it?
Are Students (and Teachers) Really Safe Using Zoom for Music Lessons?
We’re then presented with a question: are students safe on Zoom? Are teachers, or anyone else for that matter, also safe? Yes and no.
Despite some of these repairs and changes, you can’t really be 100% safe with a platform like Zoom. When you have such a big system, security issues are hard to fix at this point. Essentially, you’re using it at your own risk. But there are a few things that you can do to at least partially save yourself from such issues.
In case you’re using Zoom, we’d advise setting up the two-factor authentication for your account. Additionally, it’s always much safer to have meetings through the browser-accessible web app instead of the desktop one. Even if you have the desktop app, you can choose to use your browser in the dialog box that pops up when you click on the meeting link.
Additionally, we’d highly advise that you set up a password for every meeting that you have. You never know who has an access to the meeting link. And if you don’t protect it, pretty much anyone with this link can barge in.
How Good Is Zoom for Music Lessons With Young Students? Or Pretty Much Anyone…
These security issues should get you at least a little bit worried. While the chances of you getting targeted by hackers or unwanted meeting visitors are pretty low, it’s still not exactly the best thing to know that there are security exploits. Even though it’s probably not a pleasant thing to hear, you should definitely be at least informed about it.
Additionally, music students and teachers are focusing on audio quality as well. Zoom introduced a new feature for musicians which helps you keep audio quality during a session at a cost of video quality. However, in order to turn on this “musician mode,” you need to go into Zoom settings and adjust it.
What’s kind of tricky with this issue is that younger students may take more time to set it all up. The instructions also aren’t always that clear and it may take precious time from their lessons.
While the chances of you getting into trouble after using Zoom aren’t high, they are still higher compared to some other alternatives. And that in itself is enough to get us all worried. If for some reason you believe there’s a chance that someone wants to steal your data, Zoom definitely isn’t the best option.
Why Rock Out Loud Live Is the Best Option for Music Students and Teachers
We here at Rock Out Loud don’t like to leave anything to chance. This is why we came up with the Rock Out Loud Live platform, which can be used through Google Chrome. Peer-to-peer connection makes it safe, and you also have additional music-related tools. Not to mention that it also allows safe password-protected lessons, as well as a high-quality audio stream.
And perhaps most importantly, the Rock Out Loud Live platform does not require any registration, meaning all personal and private information from students remains protected for a very simple reason – Rock Out Loud Live never asked for it in the first place!
You can check it out and see for yourself right here.
