Duolingo is ready for its namesake platform to go up an octave as the Pittsburgh-based company plans to open a waitlist for people to join so they can begin taking music lessons on its flagship app.
The music lesson offerings serve as Duolingo's latest subject expansion following the company's addition of a math-focused app last year, which will soon be sunsetted in favor of being embedded directly into Duolingo's platform alongside these music lessons and the thousands of language lessons taken by tens of millions of people around the world daily.
Duolingo is expected to open the waitlist, initially eligible to people who use iOS devices, during its annual Duocon event, which is taking place on Oct. 11 starting at 12 p.m.
According to Vanessa Jameson, the engineering lead for Duolingo Music, the company plans to ship its music courses publicly by the end of the year, and it'll be able to offer it directly to Duolingo's already-present user base.
"The vast majority of Duolingo is still very focused on language learning," Jameson said. "We're really excited about the opportunities that math and music create, though. But we're still in their early days."
Music lessons targeting current users aren't the only audience Duolingo hopes these courses will appeal to, however.
The company hopes it'll attract those who aren't already using its platform for language learning so they can become immersed in Duolingo's growing ecosystem of subjects and educational lessons regardless of whether they have had prior experience with learning about music.
Sam Dalsimer, global communications director at Duolingo, noted internal statistics have found that 80% of those who are learning a language on Duolingo never pursued language learning before. He said the company is optimistic it will be able to do the same for those who have an interest in learning music as well.
And being able to offer all of this in one app is important, he said.
"This is about accelerating distribution of these new subjects," Dalsimer said. "We had tried [Duolingo] Math as a standalone app, and we're [now] integrating it into the main app because that's just a much faster way to immediately get it out to our 20 million-plus daily active users."
Karen Chow, the curriculum lead behind Duolingo Music, is overseeing the courses that will be offered to those wishing to learn music with Duolingo. She said no prior music experience will be necessary to learn how to read music, discriminate pitches or even play a virtual built-in piano. But above that, she's excited about how the launch of music lessons will further build on the ethos of what Duolingo is trying to achieve for its users more broadly.
"From my perspective, just from a learning perspective, I always want to emphasize to people that really it's about not just being good at one subject or just learning one particular thing — whether it be math or music — but it's really a learning strategy and application of how you learn and how you learn best that actually allows Duolingo to be able to teach these different subjects very well," she said.
During its Q2 fiscal quarter, Duolingo posted $3.7 million in net income, its first profitable quarter since becoming a public company in July 2021. The company earns a large portion of its revenue from its "Super Duolingo" subscription tier offerings, which offer an ad-free experience and other perks to those who wish to pay the monthly or annual fee.
More than 21 million people used Duolingo's language learning platform on a daily basis during its Q2, up 62% year-over-year, while its monthly users during the same time period climbed 50% year-over-year to 74.1 million people. Of those monthly users, 5.2 million people are paying for one of Duolingo's premium subscription tiers, up 59% from those who were doing the same a year ago.
