Core Music is a seven-studio music management agency that provides the skills, resources, and space for musicians to use for lessons + workshops—making the arts accessible and providing aspiring educators with hands-on teaching experience. Its mission is to support music-making as a way to improve mental health and enrich the lives of community members.
Hexham, UK
Music Studio
What was once the site of a historic tannery building up until 2007, is now home to Core Music, a music management agency whose mission is twofold: making music education accessible to the rural community and providing aspiring musicians with space for professional development. With 7 studios hosting regular lessons, workshops, and group sessions, the space has become one of the region’s only creative hubs—serving musicians within a 150 mile radius.
Yet, like many other businesses impacted by the pandemic, their story isn’t linear. In 2020, their retail store suffered, and the team had to quickly rethink their model to ensure music remained a part of their community. That’s when Paul Susans stepped in as the new manager and began shifting the business towards a music collective, studio-rental model.
Fast-forward to 2025, and the venue is well on its way to rebuilding and expanding its reach. Susans emphasizes, “Allbooked joined us the minute we finished writing our business plan.” Demand is high—with over 2,200 lessons and more than 70 group sessions between September and December 2024 alone—yet resources remain stretched. With a busy schedule, they needed a solution that could help them simplify bookings, manage operations, and reduce hands-on time.
That’s where AllBooked came into play.
As Core Music’s business model shifted, their pricing strategy evolved alongside it. Operating as a music collective, they had to carefully balance three goals:
AllBooked’s customizable pricing rules were flexible enough to handle all these complexities. With this feature, the team successfully sets rates based on room size—charging more for larger spaces and less for smaller spaces—while layering extra discounts in, depending on user type and booking duration.
They offer two kinds of discounts, each serving a different purpose. The first encourages loyalty by offering lower rates for longer bookings.
Susans explains, “Once you book a 4-hour block straight through, you get a discounted rate. Then, if you go beyond four and a half hours, essentially a full-day, the discount becomes even more significant. The more committed the musicians are to using Core, and booking within AllBooked, the more discounts they get.”
The second cuts overhead costs by offering a 10% discount on room bookings to those who take on a “duty supervisor” role, responsible for maintaining the facility, and eliminating the need to hire third parties.
AllBooked’s pricing rules made all this possible, giving the team the tools they needed to set specific rates for bookings based on time of day, day of week, booking duration, and user type.
When asked, “Why AllBooked?”, Susans emphasized adaptability as the number one reason, allowing Core to craft a truly “bespoke room hire model and terms” easily.
Before AllBooked, Core Music lacked a proper payment process, leading to guilt for charging no-shows, extra time spent manually processing payments, and higher risk for mistakes in transaction management. “If a student didn’t show up, the instructor still had to charge them because the instructor needed to pay the studio manager. The studio manager then felt bad charging the instructors, but it was necessary to cover overhead costs.”
To prevent these issues, they adopted AllBooked’s lock-in rules and payment processing features. This allowed the venue to enforce 24-hour deadlines for instructors to change or cancel bookings on behalf of their students, and guaranteed that payments were collected for completed sessions, without any extra work.
“The system pushes them to be more professional about the bookings that they make,” Susans explains, noting that it holds instructors accountable and ensures Core gets paid.
As general manager of Core Music, Susans wears many hats. He's the only team member handling bookings—and all other facets of the business—so he needed a solution to eliminate the administrative tasks involved in securing reservations.
Before AllBooked, scheduling bookings was a cumbersome task: Susans explains that there was a ton of back-and-forth just to make reservations, let alone adjust them.
“I used to have to book musicians manually, in person, over the phone, and through email. It was time consuming, and if they needed to change their bookings, it would extend the workload.”
This process, or lack thereof, was simply not sustainable. With AllBooked, there’s no guesswork about studio availability, what’s included, or how much it costs. What used to warrant an email or phone call is now obsolete, as all of this information is clearly visible to users directly in the booking window.
As a facility that serves all kinds of musicians—from vocalists to instrumentalists—Core offers a range of studio sizes, instruments, and equipment, so their instructors can choose the setup that works best for their lesson plan.
What used to be a series of inquiries through email and phone calls is now answered directly in the booking user-interface. Users can see exactly what each studio includes, along with how many occupants the room is best suited for.
“Some of our smaller rooms are best fit for one-on-one lessons, mid-sized rooms can fit groups of 3 or 4, and our largest rooms can accommodate about 10 to 15 people,” Susans explains.
With AllBooked’s customizable space attributes, Susans was able to easily specify all of these details for each studio, cutting out the back-and-forth for his customers and getting much-needed time back.
Summing up the experience for both users and the venue, he says, “What I really love about AllBooked is that it’s dead easy to use.”
By providing a flexible, automated solution, AllBooked enabled Core Music to reclaim control over their operations and manage a successful transition to a studio-rental model.
With AllBooked as a partner, Core Music was able to:
The biggest win, though? It freed up time for Susans to focus on other parts of the business. Time has a real cost, and by removing the manual work that once took up so much of his day, he’s made room for all the opportunities ahead.
With results like these, it’s no wonder that Susans wrapped up our conversation with, “There's a real need for AllBooked out there.”
