When thinking of the most solitary professions, Arctic explorers or tube drivers might come to mind, but apparently the life of a music teacher – often working alone or in small departments - can be a lonely one, at least as far as contact with other music education professionals goes.

But don’t start playing those tiny violins just yet. Striking a chord with UK music teachers, Webjam, the place for you, your groups and your sites, and Yamaha have teamed up to deliver the Yamaha Music Education online community – a place to connect, interact and collaborate. Teachers joining the community at www.yamahaeducation.co.uk can collaborate with each other and Yamaha to promote and further music education.

Webjam allows the community to orchestrate an overwhelming range of features, including:

• Forums and discussion boards.
• One to one communication with other members.
• RSS feeds to aggregate relevant information from all over the web.
• Posting and sharing streaming video and MP3s.

In addition, the Yamaha webjam has a unique replication system which allows teachers to create their own blogs about music education which can all be linked back to the main community. Members can also buy and sell musical instruments, as well as keeping themselves updated about recent events in the industry and competitions for up and coming talent that their students may wish to enter.

Bill Martin, Education Liaison Manager, Yamaha Music UK Ltd said, “Originally I just wanted a blog that people with something interesting to say could use and attract a community. However, on coming across Webjam I realised there was so much more we could do. You can have a forum, a blog, profile, MP3 player, polls, YouTube videos, the lot. It’s very simple to set up and the interface works brilliantly. Already we’ve attracted a huge number of visitors and members to the site and are well on the way to building a real community for music teachers to make their voice heard in multimedia. If you want to run a club, community or association, Webjam is a fantastic resource and I recommend it wholeheartedly”.

Yann Motte, co-founder and CEO of WebJam, added, “It’s great to see Webjam being used to create communities by such a huge range of people with such diverse needs, from bringing together the millions of Londoners that use the Northern Line every day to smaller groups including local football teams and knitting circles. It really is putting the internet back into the hands of the people.”

Webjam was recently named as a finalist in the Red Herring 100 Europe 2008.

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Further enquiries:

Nicholas Vangelis, Skywrite Communications, nick.vangelis@skywritecomms.com, +44 20 7608 4680

Sonia Kalfon, Webjam Ltd, media@webjam-ltd.com, +44 20 3170 8741

About Webjam

Webjam provides individuals and organisations with a free and flexible platform to create a relevant and personalised web presence.

Founded in 2006 by a British, a Spanish and a French entrepreneur in London, UK, Webjam differentiates itself by bundling powerful community features with an easy drag-and-drop interface, a rich catalogue of modules and styles and a unique feature to replicate content, applications and lay-outs. Users are able to piece together their perfect online community, taking feeds from major services including Flickr, Google, YouTube, Amazon and Gmail. Available to everyone regardless of technical skills, Webjam allows anyone to share their creations and learn from others.

Webjam was recently na,ed as a finalist in the Red Herring 100 Europe 2008, and has been touted as an alternative to Facebook by BBC News Online.

For more information about “the place for you, your groups, your sites”, visit www.webjam.com.