For students looking to step up their game, Studytracks offers a solution that goes beyond traditional edtech platforms, combining both edtech and music tech.
Think about how easy it is to remember the chorus to Purple Rain. Now imagine if students could remember cell structures in biology that way. That’s what Studytracks does – puts curriculum to music.
Now based in Paris, the startup has just closed a €1 million seed round led by OneRagtime and Leansquare.
The new investment will be used to accelerate StudyTracks presence in the US market and make the tracks accessible to all students anywhere, at any time.
Founded by Ivor Novello award-winning UK songwriter George Hammond-Hagan, Studytracks evolved into a tech venture from the simple idea of helping a son to study more effectively using music.
The startup uses music’s ability to stimulate the whole brain through a diverse set of perceptual and cognitive operations to aid recollection and retention. Studytracks turns curriculum into music to drive engagement, retention and achievement in and out of the classroom.
“Music is known to help with memory formation and retrieval,” said George Hammond-Hagan, Studytracks CEO and founder. “We all, at one point in our lives, have studied with music in the background as a way to help with focus. We’re turning this around and making great music to learn from. Our method has proven itself to thousands of students around the world. We’ve heard from teachers that StudyTracks saves time in communicating complex concepts and students have fun learning the fundamentals. We want anyone in any classroom to have access to Studytrack’s 1,500+ tracks and, with the new funds, we’re looking at how to make that possible – working with our new investors, teachers and academic institutions in the US and France.”
Founded in 2015, Studytracks now offers over 1,500 tracks on its app covering over 45 subjects, is used by more than 100 schools, and has been downloaded more than 400,000 times. Its tracks cover UK high and secondary school syllabus, grades 6-12 in the US, and Brevet and Bac in France.
Pilots run in US high schools have shown that using students using Studytracks increased pass rates from 23% to 76%. Independent research has also shown that students using Studytracks music increased their test results by 44% and three-quarters of students were able to retain all information from the first round of testing or improve their test scores in at least one of the in-app quizzes.
“Studytracks is a highly promising ‘Made in Europe’ gold nugget with a brilliant international future. We were instantly seduced by the founders and their vision,” said Stéphanie Hospital, CEO and founder of OneRagtime. “They have succeeded in innovating in a high-potential sector with an incredible educational and social project.”
“We believe the technology developed by Studytracks has real development potential and has real economic value in a changing industry,” added Ben Piquard, CEO of LeanSquare. “This new partnership will allow Studytracks to accelerate its development process and growth.”