A Brief History of Starland Music
1979 - 1999
There were two different historical roots to the current Starland website. The first can be traced to a chain of ground-breaking music shops in the 1970’s and 1980’s called City Music, and three of the existing Starland team trace their first employment back to this source. The second was a business founded in Spalding, Lincs which specialised in working with music teachers in the same period, and this traded as Keyboards in Action. They were merged together in 1989, and all the educational business and Mail Order business were combined under the management of current owner, Nick Kilby, and operated for almost 10 years from small warehouse premises with a local showroom in Plympton, Devon.
In 1983, the year of the launch of the remarkable DX7 synth and the Clavinova digital piano range, Keyboards in Action had been recognised by Yamaha as its first education specialist retailer. In 1985, the team launched a nationwide service for keyboard enthusiasts, called Keyboards Direct with a dedicated technical support team supported by electronics engineers, many of whom are in close contact with our business 30+ years later. By 1995, as we were no longer limited to keyboard instruments, the trading name of Keyboards in Action was incorporated into Starland Music, and over a half of the team were involved in our wide range of percussion, brass and woodwind and stringed instruments.
The technical support team of Keyboards Direct became very involved with the early music computers, and launched the Yamaha CX5 music computer at the Ideal Home Exhibition winning awards for merging music and technology. Software distribution deals were signed with Roland and Yamaha and a new division Music Software Express produced its own catalogue of software to work with keyboards and computers. New software programs were developed for Atari and Archimdes computers, and years of development got under way with education software. This division exhibited software programs at Frankfurt's Music Messe, and education software became a vital part of Starland Music's portfolio.
In 1997, Starland launched one of the first music retail websites (v1) in the UK, and won many awards for its informative catalogues and website descriptions. By now, over 8,000 schools in the UK had opened accounts with the company, and over 1,000 education institutions today have a history of ordering equipment which goes back over 25 years.
Following some years of development and testing, Starland became the exclusive distributor of ground-breaking music sofware. Programs like Keyboard Trainer, Theory Trainer and other SoundTrack titles were developed for Archimedes, Atari and PC computers in schools, and Starland Music retains a special interest in programs which teach music interactively.
1999 - 2009
The company opened a 13,000 sq ft Music Technology Centre in Estover, Devon in 2000, and combined its warehousing, service, showroom and offices in one location. Almost 500,000 catalogues were mailed to customers during this decade, but the extensive website (v2) was upgraded to work hand-in-hand with the catalogues and showroom. Despite acclaim for the high-quality showroom and workshop facilities, and winning Industry and Training Awards, it became increasingly obvious that our customers were more swayed by lower prices than by top quality local service, so very regrettably the building was sold in January 2010, enabling us to improve our competitiveness across the board.
With the increasing awareness of the need to reduce wastage and paper usage, the routine of an annual production of up to 20,000 catalogues was halted in 2008 and a small number of catalogues is sent to past customers and classroom teachers every other year. At the same time, the use of the website vastly increased, saving many trees and cutting waste dramatically.
Our profile for the 2010s
Rather than move to smaller premises, Starland Music had already set up a partnership arrangement the previous year with another large educational supplies company, Frederick Hyde Ltd, and had gradually moved all the stock lines and special offers from the premises in Estover to Frederick Hyde’s warehousing in Surrey. They also have a large piano showroom in Haslemere under their trading name Chamberlain Pianos. When the Starland building was sold in January 2010, this enabled Starland’s sales and technical support team to concentrate on writing and reviewing the instruments, and providing a first-class personal ordering and advice service to Music teachers and their pupils. Most of our stock is now shipped to customers throughout the world from premises in Surrey – midway between Gatwick and Heathrow airports, and several UK carriers are used daily to ship our customers’ orders to their homes and schools.
However, our Music Advisory Office has remained in Devon at the company's Head Office.
The most recent education catalogue (2023) is 172 pages, and shows the tremendous advantages of combining our stock ranges with Frederick Hyde’s. We now produce one edition every other year, sent out only to recent customers as more and more teachers and administrators are using this website to research and place orders. If our famous “We Think” mini reviews had been included on the printed page, it would have been 400 pages or more, so these are exclusively on this website, which has been redesigned for further product expansion. Website v3 launched in 2010 and served the company until summer 2016.
Partnership is definitely the way forward – we are proud of our 30-yr old partnerships with many of the most active Music Departments in the country, and there isn’t a single LEA (local education authority) in the UK without Starland customers in its area. We also assist music therapists in NHS trusts, musicians working in prisons, special schools, youth clubs, churches, charities and voluntary organisations. We are proud too of our 14-year old “fulfilment” arrangement with Frederick Hyde Ltd, as our combined purchasing power has enabled us to double our product range AND make our prices even more competitive. If your interest is in Music Education, you should have a Starland Music account!
We do what we do best for our customers – advice, guidance, information and tech support, and our partners at Frederick Hyde do the distribution and invoicing. We don’t make claims to be able to support professional working musicians, bands, and pro studios, because every other music shop claims to do this better. Become partners with us, and we’ll give you the personal guidance that is usually absent from the companies with the big impersonal websites.
A browse through the Starland website followed by a chat on the telephone (01752 313 300), or an email, thoughtfully answered, could guide you to the right instrument for your needs, and save you a fortune.
2016 - 19 Upgrade of Online services
After six years using our Interspire website, we designed and built a new Magento website (website V4) with programming help from our long-term partners at Modbury Marketing and Dotsquares. During 2018 and 2019 further improvements were implemented, and all of the Privacy and security policies have been reviewed and updated. With plenty of communication links to blogs and videos, we hope you will keep in touch via email and telephone. HOWEVER, we are not seeking a mass audience, as our niche is providing a first-class service to Music educationalists and charity customers. If the fancy links get in the way of efficiently providing you with answers to your questions, please let us know! Please email any comments to [email protected]
2019 Quotation Service extended to Churches and Charities
Late in 2017 we installed an interactive "Request Quote" service into our website, initially to assist our school customers in planning future budget expenditure. This developed in 2018 to a full online Advisory Service, and we are now able to offer the same service to choirs, church worship groups, NHS Trusts and charities. This is a response to demand from many school music teachers who are also Church organists or choir leaders, or who have become music therapists. Our advisors have the perfect experience to recommend good quality microphones, music stands, and instruments for worship groups, whilst concentrating on proven low-cost alternatives. Our mission has always been to make a small precious budget go a long, long way.
For details on using Starland's "Request Quote" service, see our guidelines shown here.
2020 Towards Zero Waste
One of our aims is to put more emphasis and thought behind ways to help the environment for the future. This is a real challenge for all retailers, as we have to juggle with the needs of our customers and the abilities of the manufacturers. Changes to the manufacturing process, using different materials and different packaging is a very slow process, and as musicians we don't want to see the quality of our instruments gradually deteriorating in any way. Although we want to see less plastic and polystyrene waste in the equipment from the factory, we don't want to unbox instruments which have become affected by damp or damage in transit.
As a specialist retailer, we have in the past posted many printed catalogues to our customers, reaching a peak of 80,000 150-page catalogues in 1998. In 2005 this was down to 20,000, and down further to 5,000 by 2018 as more of our customers access our information online. 2020 sees a vast increase in the online resources, so that our messages no longer have an impact on tonnes of paper resources. We know some people love flicking through a paper publication, so we published just 6,000 catalogues in September 2023 - ask us if you'd like a copy. Just remember to register if you are in education, so that we can register your login for Education prices.
2023 Keeping up-to-date and publishing reviews
The main problem with printed catalogues has always been keeping it accurate. Just like in previous years, the artwork for our latest 2023 edition was sent to the printers in August, and by September 1st it was out of date (slightly) with new price lists published by some suppliers after the print deadline. So, for the past 12 months we have instituted a DAILY stock check and price check, and it is accurate enough to show availability guidelines and the latest pricing for almost 4,000 products. As on average manufacturers issue changes twice a year, that's almost 8,000 manual checks a year, or over 30 every working day. The job is so important that it falls to the MD to monitor this daily - apologies folks, as the occasional error can creep in!!
One of our pet hates is the way that some companies constantly email requests for review. With some of our suppliers we get questions about how good their email was, how satisfied are we with the response, how was their packaging, how was the delivery driver. This is a total waste of time, and Starland Music believes its customers are too busy for that. But it is true that new potential customers like to see independent comments from teachers about Starland's service, so for one month (July 2023) we asked 50 of our regular customers what they thought, and every answer has been published here www.starland.co.uk/reviews
We look forward to working with Music Teachers in the new Academic Year and beyond. Thank you for reading this full history of our company.
Nick Kilby - September 2023
Managing Director
