We sell music in three unique ways!

1. RRR.fm: Perfect for teachers and parents

RRR.fm is our streaming music service. Subscriptions provide unlimited access to our library of songs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Find songs by name, subject area, or state standard/assessment. Best of all, all music is included with a subscription and new songs become available immediately. (No CDs or downloads to worry about.)

Visit the RRR.fm page and see it for yourself.

2. Download: offline use

Individuals can purchase each song pack, subject album, or theme collection directly from us. Downloads from our website come as ZIP files containing custom-made worksheets and games in PDF form, lyrics, and all versions of each song. We offer a discounted box set of our four core subject albums.

You can purchase music via credit card, PayPal, or purchase order.

Albums are also available on iTunes or AmazonMP3 and come as split albums, or virtual discs, that each cost $9.99. Individual songs are available for $.99 and do not include lyrics or PDF worksheets.

3. CDs: old school

Individuals can purchase any of our core subject albums directly from us. We ship CDs the next business day and email secure links to lyrics and custom-made worksheets and games in PDF form. We offer a discounted box set of our four core subject albums.

You can purchase music via credit card, PayPal, or purchase order.

We realize that most of our customers are teachers, so we created a permanent discount on our box set: while each album costs $19.98 each, you can buy all four together for $59.99! Learn more about the box set.

Even better, we built our own streaming service to serve schools, including teachers and students. It’s much cheaper than downloads and provides 24/7, on-demand access to our entire library from any computer. Learn more about RRR.fm.

For purchases on our website we currently accept payment via credit card or PayPal.

For offline purchases, we accept credit cards and Purchase Orders from schools. See our purchase orders page for more information.

PayPal protects your financial information with industry-leading security and fraud prevention systems. When you use PayPal, your financial information is not shared with us, the merchant. Once your payment is complete, you will be emailed a receipt for this transaction.

As a fraud-prevention measure, PayPal sends an email confirmation for every online PayPal payment that you make.

Regardless of where you shop online, PayPal’s Buyer Complaint Policy lets you submit a dispute for an item you don’t receive or an item significantly not as described. By doing so, you have the opportunity to resolve your dispute directly with us, the seller.

More on this at the PayPal website.

When you purchase music directly from us on our website, you can pay using your PayPal account or a credit card. (You can pay offline with a purchase order, too, by contacting us.) Once you submit payment, our system automatically emails you a unique download link, which expires after a specified time period or number of clicks, whichever comes first.

Left-click the link and it will open a download window in your default Web browser, and might prompt for a location to save the ZIP file to your computer. (If it does not prompt you, it will probably download it to your default downloads folder or to the folder where a download was most recently saved.) Give the download some time–the files are large!

Once you have downloaded the ZIP file, unzip it For most Windows PC and Mac OS users, this means simply double-clicking the ZIP file. If you cannot unzip the file, try downloading WinZip, a popular tool for Windows. You can usually download a free trial version.

The ZIP file will unpack the file, revealing a folder containing your songs. Enjoy!

For purchasing on iTunes, HowStuffWorks has a good overview of the iTunes software and music store.

We sell/distribute music in three unique ways. Read more here.

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: Music downloaded directly from our website or from AmazonMP3 comes in MP3 format, which, as you can probably guess, can be played by every portable MP3 player and software, including applications by both Apple and Microsoft.

iTunes songs, however, come in MP4 format and are primarily for use with Apple products, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

There is no DRM (“Digital Rights Management”) attached to our song files no matter where you get them.

Yes, before producing songs for our core library we review federal standards and state assessment guidelines for middle schools in California, Texas, and Florida–”adoption” states–as well as New York and Massachusetts, and make sure the topic is hits the mark. We have matched most of our songs to Illinois standards as well. Even though the songs are targeted toward middle schools, some topics in other areas (especially in English language arts) align all the way down to 3rd grade, while others (especially science) push up through high school.

Yes, we hope so. The bottom of each song page lists the exact standards we have aligned our songs to in California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas. Most other standardized assessment guidelines are similar to these. We target middle schools, but some topics (especially in English language arts) align with standards down to 3rd grade or so.

The short answer is: yes, we believe it will help your students in two ways. First, repeated listening will embed the lyrics through mnemonics, which helps with memorization. Second, the songs engage and entertain students on their own turf, which has indirect benefits in numerous ways. We have heard from schools all over the country–from urban to rural–where previously disengaged students have suddenly come alive and begun singing to their teachers.

The longer answer is: information presented in a familiar and fun manner is more likely to capture the interest of a listener, no matter how difficult the information is to understand. Imagine teaching the alphabet to a preschool child and requiring them to memorize a string of 26 letters as opposed to learning the “ABC” song. We understand the power of rhythm-based mnemonics and use them to teach to more challenging topics.

We also realize that today’s youth listen to hip hop and rap in huge numbers that transcend race, culture, and age. Our songs entertain and engage students, but the more fundamental goal is to convey academic-based information in format that students of many backgrounds and cultures understand and identify with. Read more about our research.

The academic and educational spheres are full of literature on multiple intelligencies, multi-track learning, and more. Our research page discusses this in more detail.

We hope so! The basic idea is to get students to hear the words. The possibilities are endless: to start, we have compiled a starter list of teacher tips for incorporating the songs into an existing curriculum. Have an idea or a lesson plan? Contact us!

To help teachers use the songs in a variety of ways, we produce every song in four versions:

• The Original Track: the complete song at its normal tempo.
• The Downtempo Track: the complete song at a reduced tempo.
• The Recall Track™ eliminates key words from the lyrics.
• The Instrumental Track: karaoke-style, without the lead vocals during the verses.

The vocal delivery in rap/hip-hop music lends itself to rhyme-based mnemonics that make memorization easy. Beyond that, we realize that today’s youth listen to hip hop and rap in huge numbers that transcend race, culture, and age. These days, rap is synonymous with pop–everyone from Mos Def to Justin Timberlake to Saturday Night Live produces rap music.

That said, many of our songs live in more of a mainstream pop world, such as “Figurative Language” and “Layers of the Earth”. We continue to experiment with music and respond to feedback from listeners. Have an idea? Request a song!

It’s not uncommon for teachers and parents to assume rap is just “an urban thing” that won’t work with their students. We’re here to dispel the myth! In commercial music, hip-hop and rap continue to be the top selling musical form amongst all races of ‘tweens, teens, and young adults; everyone from Mos Def to Justin Timberlake to Saturday Night Live produces rap music. With the popularity of rap, many students gravitate to it as the more popular form of music for academic-based learning.

In fact, some of our biggest success stories come from small-town schools in Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee and suburban schools in Massachusetts and Illinois. Using rhythms and rhyme to teach is most definitely not just an urban thing.

RRR.fm is a streaming music service that we built with teachers in mind. It is much less expensive than buying CDs and downloads, provides 24/7 access for teachers and students from any computer, and eliminates the hassle of downloads on school computer. Best of all, all new music added to the system at no additional charge. Over time, the system will hold much more music than we publish via CD and download, and it will appear immediately.

The system contains every song we produce in multiple versions (original, downtempo, recall, and instrumental), plus lyrics, custom-made worksheets, and related resources elsewhere online.

You have access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from any computer during your subscription, which is billed either monthly or annually depending on the type of account. (Annual accounts include 2 months free.)

Teachers

If you have only forgotten your password, there is a built-in password retrieval tool at the bottom-right of the login screen. Enter your city, state, and login (the email address you use to log in), and the system will email you a link to reset your password.

If you have forgotten your login:
Please email us with your name, email address, school name, city, and state, and we will retrieve your account.

Students

Your teacher created the classroom login and password. If you have lost either one, please contact your teacher or a classmate to get the information.

Usage statistics are not tracked at an individual student level.

We track usage statistics for each classroom login and each teacher login. We also keep tabs on aggregate use by school and by song. Usage information is used mostly to help us plan our data hosting costs and ensure our pricing is where it should be. Song information helps us know which songs are most popular at any given time.

You’ll find everything you need on our contact page.

We are committed to timely, transparent, unbelievably helpful customer service. As a startup we keep zany hours with a small team, but we also have a number of tools to help us help you, including Google Voice, Get Satisfaction, and Zendesk. Feel free to call or write day or night; if we aren’t available, we’ll get back to you pronto.

You’ll find all the info you need on our contact page.

Visit the RRR.fm sign-up page to subscribe a teacher or entire school now using a credit card. If you need to use a Purchase Order or want to subscribe your school district, please contact us.