The Music Man, Part 1: Is this $3,000 online piano class legit?

You may have seen this ad: A frenetic, wild-haired concert pianist says he can make any newbie a virtuoso in months. Just take his online course for $3,000.

Too good to be true? Redditors thought so. Posts dating back years cried scam. Some went further and claimed his virtual piano academy is a cover to recruit Scientologists.

In Part 1 of "The Music Man," Endless Thread investigates.

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben: A few months ago, producer Grace Tatter told us about a mysterious set of videos that had been following her around the internet.

Amory: I mean… it kind of was her fault though. Right, Grace?

Grace: I guess it was. I had been interested in learning piano. And I had this other friend who had ALSO been wanting to learn piano. Whose name is ALSO…Ben.

Ben: Too many Bens!

Amory: We already got one of those. We’ll call Grace’s Friend…George.

Grace: Fine, we can call him George. So as I was saying…George and I had been poking around online about learning piano…and we both came across this online piano school…called Ridley Academy that he showed to me. And Ridley Academy is named after its very energetic founder…Stephen Ridley.

[Stephen Ridley: It takes six to twelve months of three minutes per day, and it's as easy as watching Netflix!]

Amory: And this appealed to Grace, and…George…because the price was USUALLY nearly $3,000…but it was being offered for a significant discount, for only $1400.

Grace: I did a little more Googling about the school ... and Stephen Ridley. And all of a sudden, whether it was the internet Cookies…or something else…it seemed like every single ad I saw on YouTube was from this guy.

Ben: Those internet cookies will get you Grace.

[Stephen Ridley: My name is Stephen Ridley. I've been a concert pianist for more than nine years…]

Amory: So we sat down together to watch an ad that had popped up for Grace.

[Ridley: Check it out…]

Ben: You know what's crazy about this, Grace? I was served this ad yesterday.

Grace: That's really bizarre...

Amory: In the ad, you see this guy — Stephen Ridley — in a paisley blazer at a grand piano, pummeling out a medley of pop songs.

Amory: He says you can learn a hundred songs on the piano with just four chords.

[Stephen Ridley: And then, using the Ridley method, you can take those same four chords and make them sound amazing! Like this!]

Ben: If you google Stephen Ridley...you're going to get a lot of videos like this, of Stephen at a piano.

Amory: Stephen's in his 30s, he's fit. Has purposefully tousled light brown hair. And he's VERY enthusiastic. He's often playing the piano standing up.

Ben: The only way to do it! He really goes at it, too, with the satisfied grimace of someone performing an extreme endurance sport. Or a cathartic solo. In most of these videos, if this guy is talking, he is shouting.

[Stephen Ridley: This is the next evolution in piano education and artist development.]

Amory: Ridley Academy, he says, throws a lot of traditional piano education out the window…and it makes learning the piano more accessible. All for the low price of…$2,997.

[Stephen Ridley: There is a much, much, much simpler way, and through seven years of research, I found it.]

Ben: Seven years of research! But here’s the thing. Stephen Ridley’s new way of learning piano is not all Grace’s Google searching yielded about the man.

Grace: There are also a lot of posts on Reddit and other music related forums calling him... a fraud. Posts with titles like, “Stephen Ridley blatant rip off.”

Amory: "Stephen Ridley is a scam."

Ben: "Stephen Ridley, a con artist who has gone largely unnoticed”

Amory: "Beware of this piano scammer." Three exclamation points.

Ben: So this…got us thinking about the definition of a scam. Amory? Definition of a scam?

Amory: A scam is an intentional misguiding to separate people from their money.

Ben: Yeah, I like that. And I think a key ingredient is promises that are not just false, but specifically designed to bring you in with the specific motivation of tricking you. And as we all know, tricking starts with T. And tee rhymes with P. Which stands for POOL.

Amory: (singing) The Music Man!

Ben: Great musical. Amory, you were an acting major. Can you remind us of the plot of The Music Man?

Amory: Oh I sure can. You’ve got this smooth talking salesman who comes into a little town and charges a bunch of money to the townspeople for fake music lessons. Among other things. But that's the relevant part.

Ben: A lot of these posts, on reddit, on piano forums, on TikTok...are basically charging Ridley with being a modern- day Music Man.

[TikTok 1: Do not fall for this scam artist. Seriously, this should be illegal.]

[TikTok 2: Playing the piano is not simple. It's dishonest to say that it is.]

Amory: But when we started looking into some of these claims about Ridley's bona fides as a music teacher...we found some accusations that are definitely NOT part of the Music Man.

Ben: Although they ARE part of the movie Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta and Forest Whitaker. Which as we all know from the platform boots and spaceships, is about Scientology. And these posts online claim that Ridley's real objective…is to recruit people to the Church of Scientology.

Amory: So we had to know — is this eye-popping, super energetic, supposedly game-changing musical academy… a scam? Scientology recruitment? Neither? Or a little bit of both? What we found had us questioning the very definition of a scam.

G: I’m Grace - still not a piano virtuoso, never-will-be - Tatter.

Ben: I'm Ben Brock 40-songs-in-two-minutes Johnson.

Amory: I'm Amory Dianetics Sivertson.

Ben: And this is Endless Thread

Amory: Coming at you from WBUR, Boston's NPR mothership, on our feet. At the piano.

Ben: Today’s episode: The Music Man, Part 1.

Amory: So…obviously…we needed to talk to Stephen Ridley. And Grace was on it.

Grace: Except…for reasons that were mysterious to me…the music man didn’t respond!

Ben: But Grace kept at it. She doesn’t take no for an answer. Right Grace!?

Grace: Never. I got this.

Amory: And while Grace was chasing Mr. Music Man… we went back to the many posts about Ridley Academy.

[(Jennifer singing)
Jennifer Pierce: Can y’all hear?
Amory: Yeah, that sounds nice. It sounds a little far away from you, but I, the, the balance is, is pretty good…(fade under)]

Amory: Jennifer Pierce is a Ridley Academy student who we found online.

Ben: She’s always wanted to be a musician.

Jennifer Pierce: Whoa, sorry, I'm super nervous.

Amory: But for most of Jennifer’s life, that felt almost impossible.

Ben: Jennifer is a remarkably positive person.

Jennifer Pierce: Life's always gonna throw things at you. So you always have to try to internalize it, but then kind of twist it around and shoot it back out into a positive way.

Amory: That positivity though? It has been hard won.

Ben: Jennifer told us right off the bat that, for years, she was in an abusive relationship. Then, she was in a car accident. She suffered injuries that made it hard for her to walk, even to think.

Amory: In 2020, she was trying to leave her husband. Worried that, because of her injuries, she wouldn't be able to support herself. And terrified that she would lose custody of her children.

Jennifer Pierce: And I've always been the type of person where I've always tried to be kind to everybody, and I didn't understand why the world was just so negative.

Amory: Jennifer was looking for a win. Some sense of control over her own fate.

Ben: And then, she saw an ad that, to her, almost felt like an answered prayer.

Jennifer Pierce: I see this ad of this guy and he's like, Hey, you want to learn how to write music? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yes I do. And he's like, join my webinar, dah, dah, dah, just $58. And I didn't have any money, you know, like my ex was super controlling. Like I could just, he would give me money for groceries and the bills and that was it.

Amory: There was the super-positive, you-can-do this Stephen Ridley, boogey-ing right out of the screen at her. And his ad was saying that the price — 58 dollars — would only be available for a limited time.

Jennifer Pierce: Fifty-eight dollars is not even nothing, but I didn't even have that.

Ben: Jennifer clicked on the link for the live webinar, even though she couldn’t really afford it. To her surprise, the link didn’t ask her for payment information. It brought her into a waiting room.

Jennifer Pierce: And I remember it, just counting down, and I just watched it count down, like, just with so much hope. And then kind of losing that hope. And then it went down to one.

Amory: Somehow, without paying, Jennifer was in. And the man leading the webinar was, of course, Stephen Ridley.

Jennifer Pierce: I was like, this is exactly what I've always wanted. I've always wanted to learn music, and I've always, most importantly, wanted to write music because I was always like a poet. I always wrote, but I didn't know how to make music.

Amory: Several months later, Jennifer would scrape together more than a thousand dollars to take another online course through Ridley Academy.

Ben: She was all in. And a week after buying the course, there was a competition to have a one-on-one class with Stephen Ridley himself.

Amory: And she had that answered-prayer feeling again. Jennifer won.

Jennifer Pierce: I've never won anything in my entire life, you know, nothing, nothing. I never had anything amazing happen to me and I just felt like and I kept reading it over and over again And I was like wait and like with my comprehension issues, I was like, did I really win?

Ben: When it came time for the meeting — it was almost more like a therapy session than a piano lesson.

Jennifer Pierce: We ended up just talking for an hour and a half and he told me things about his life, and I told him things about mine and I had told him, you know, like I'm in a relationship I don't know how to get out of, and he was like he was the right person to tell me, he's like, Jennifer you need to get out of that you're gonna end up dead.

Ben: Jennifer told us Stephen acted like a friend when she needed one — and ignited her inner artist.

Jennifer Pierce: He would say, you're going to fail at times. But eventually, you'll become a professional if you just keep on. You won't be an amateur, you'll be a professional. And those are the words that I remember all the time when I'm struggling or when I doubt myself. It's his words.

(Jennifer singing)

Amory: Today Jennifer writes her own songs, including what she played for us. She says she’s performed at a couple charity events, and that she's pursuing music production education.

Ben: All, she says, because of Stephen Ridley. The way she talks about it…it feels like she thinks it’s…fate? Something bigger than pursuing an interest. Jennifer believes…it’s life-changing.

Amory: And…no shade on Jennifer at all, or her musical abilities, but… that gave us pause. Here’s a person who has been through a lot. She’s desperate for something to go her way. And something positive in her life happens.

Ben: And if you’re even just a little bit cynical. You might get a little worried for Jennifer. About how much stock she’s putting into her future as a musician…thanks to this online class. You might even worry…that the class itself…is a scam. But…is it?

Amory: More about the man at the piano…or, in his case, sometimes on top of it…after the break.

[SPONSOR BREAK]

Ben: So, what do we know about Stephen Ridley, besides his penchant for loud piano playing and loudly printed blazers?

Amory: Long before we found posts on various forums about Stephen Ridley...Ridley made some headlines for posting on a forum himself, called Wall Street Oasis.

Ben: He wrote a post about quitting his investment banking job to be a musician, and the post went viral, in 2012. Long before rage-quitting was a thing, it had that vibe. Ridley’s post suggests he hit a limit. He was fed up. He walked out into the street and started banging on the ivories. Literally. One of the those pianos on the street in London? He just started playing one. And he didn’t stop. It was covered by Business Insider. Bloomberg.

Amory: Stephen talks about the decision to quit in a video from 2021 called “Making Money Doing What You Love.”

[Stephen Ridley: …I hate my job. I hate my life…]

Ben: After that, Stephen began posting a lot of videos of himself playing piano, often what seem to be impromptu performances on the street.

(Stephen playing piano)

Amory: At first the videos look like they're filmed with phones — handheld footage, not a lot of spectators.

Ben: But over time, Ridley’s videos become slicker, more polished. In 2015, he posts a video called Introducing Stephen Ridley, featuring his signature vigorous piano playing

(Stephen Ridley playing “We Found Love in A Hopeless Place")

Ben: The description says it was recorded "live, at a secret location." And it ends like this:

[Stephen Ridley: No tricks. No b*******. Just the truth.]

Amory: Ridley dabbled in the financial arts again in 2018 when he started a cryptofund called Pablo that he told one newspaper would make “incredible returns for everybody involved.”

Ben: We haven’t found any evidence of incredible returns for everyone involved.

Amory: He started Ridley Academy shortly thereafter, around 2019.

Ben: In videos, Stephen's shared more about his own story. That he's overcome some odds. He grew up in a tiny town in the North of England. His father died when he was young. And he’s partially deaf.

But let’s go back to before we talked to Jennifer. When all we knew about the content of what Stephen Ridley actually teaches was from the ad Grace showed us.

[Stephen Ridley: Exact same chords!]

Amory: Learning music is great. And if there are ways to make music education more accessible and more fun, even better.

Ben: Yeah. But, to us, this ad seemed to be suggesting that Ridley Academy is some kind of shortcut to a level of mastery beyond playing pop songs with the same four chords.

Amory: He’s hardly going to put all of his secrets in one ad, though.

[Stephen Ridley: If you want to know the shortcuts to learn piano fast, I created a live online piano masterclass that's completely free today.]

Ben: So we went to the website for his free masterclass.

Amory: And it looks A LOT like the website for the company MasterClass — you know, the online education platform worth billions of dollars that has a bunch of classes from celebrities like Natalie Portman or Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Ben: Both websites have white, sans-serif text against black backdrops, with red logos and buttons.

Amory: The Ridley Masterclass website makes some pretty dramatic claims about the Ridley method and what this class can do. Including, quote-unquote you'll learn piano FAST. Up to 40 new songs in 1 hour.

Ben: If you scroll down the website further, you'll see a section with different logos of publications like Vogue, CNN, and The Financial Times.

Amory: And then, at the bottom of the page — there's a place to sign up for this free masterclass.

Ben: So Grace took that free masterclass, you know, for podcast journalism...twice.

Amory: And...

Grace: I learned nothing.

Ben: It was basically a 90-minute sales pitch, to sign up for a longer series of classes, called the COMPLETE masterclass, all for the low price of $1997, right Grace?

Grace: Yeah, and that was billed as a discount, compared to what Ridley said was the normal price of $2,997.

Amory: So he's not teaching you for 90 minutes. It's like sitting through the, um, what is that that they do at resorts? They like, they make you sit through a timeshare presentation.

Grace: Exactly.

Amory: Okay, that's what that was. Because I was going to say, if he's like, you can learn 40 songs in under an hour, then 90 minutes, you should have all, you should know the full piano

Ben: So Grace, when you took this free webinar, you got some hints at what would be in the complete piano masterclass, right?

Grace: Right, basically…a few weeks on the basics of the piano – the keys, the pedals. Some focus on what he calls “finger work,” making your fingers and hands more agile. A few weeks on rhythm.

Amory: Ooh, tantalizing.

Ben: But that overview didn’t come with many tips you could start using to play the piano now. You’d have to pay for the class to learn anything practical.

Grace: And look, I have been resistant to music instruction in the past. Stephen Ridley would hardly be the first person to fail to teach me to play the piano. So I reached out to an artist named Lauren Sum, who also attended the free masterclass.

Lauren Sum: He was just making everyone excited, and it's like, oh, if you, You know, buy into this program like only you only have to practice three minutes a day and you're gonna be as good as I am which – yeah, that's not possible, so.

Amory: Lauren posts on TikTok as @LololovesMusic. One of her most-viewed videos ever is from 2021, after she took that free masterclass. You heard a clip of it earlier. It’s using that TikTok bot voice…

[TikTok: This free webinar turned into an infomercial for a $1, 500 program... ]

Ben: Lauren says that part of her was skeptical, and part of her was inspired by Stephen’s energy.

Lauren Sum: I feel so embarrassed about this, I mean I was buying into this because he was going into the emotion part of music and how anyone can do this and how he's, it's like, you take my program, it's a miracle. You'll be like a genius.

Ben: Lauren remembered something about the free masterclass that Grace also experienced.

Amory: That Stephen and his assistant would yell out the names of people who are purchasing the program, and where they're from. People from all over the world.

Ben: Lauren told us that it made her feel like this was something she just had to get in on.

Lauren Sum: It really, truly felt like I was hypnotized. While this was all going on, I think I was going on Google, a Google search, and seeing what other people had to say this, and then I just came across Reddit.

[Redditor 1: I will teach you the Stephen Ridley system right here in less time than it takes you to watch the ad, much less give this asshole any money.

Redditor 2: My little boy was so excited to watch his master class...assshole just led him on for 2 hours and tried to sell him a $2,000 dollar course that was 90% off. He was trying to say that the course was worth $14k… POS.

Redditor 3 : He is a crook who deserves to be exposed to a larger audience]

Ben: Lauren says that reading other people call this a scam...made her snap out of whatever she was feeling.

Amory: At the time, the complete masterclass was being offered for 1500 dollars.

Lauren: I've learned piano and, like, guitar songs through free YouTube, and so I just … I feel like this is just out of the realm, 1500 up front for some unknown education. It's not like a college education. You're not getting credentials or any kind of certificate from this. It just does not sit right with me.

Amory: If it is a scam… Lauren dodged it.

Ben: So, here's what we know about Ridley Academy: the free masterclass is more of a commercial than a class.

Amory: The website looks a lot like the website for MasterClass…so you could see someone thinking that Ridley Academy is affiliated with the bigger, more established company, even though it's not.

Ben: You know, Werner Herzog, Jodie Foster, Stephen Ridley. And then there's the suggestion of these endorsements from Vogue, the Financial Times, and CNN.

Amory: We couldn't find any articles about Ridley Academy in the publications listed on the Ridley Academy website.

Ben: In fact, we reached out to those publications, and we heard back from The Financial Times.

Amory: They said they had never published any articles about Ridley Academy.

Ben: The plot thickens! But still — we needed to talk to more people who had actually taken the piano course beyond the free class.

Amory: So we started looking at all of the reviews we could find.

Ben: There are A LOT of positive reviews online, from all over the world.

Amory: Some of them sounded kind of... the same.

Ben: The plot thickens again! There's this one glowing testimonial on LinkedIn from a guy named Jerry Daniels.

Amory: And it is very similar to a blog post written by a guy named Serge Ramelli, that was published last year.

Ben: Both posts describe disappointing results with an app called Simply Piano.

Amory: Uh! That Simply Piano. And these posters’ daughters introducing them to Stephen Ridley's music.

Ben: And signing up for the course after going to a Stephen Ridley concert in Los Angeles…

Amory: Where they both compare the performance to an Elton John concert. Which, is a little sus.

Ben: They're not word-for-word the same, but the content of the story about how Jerry Daniels and Serge Ramelli discovered Ridley's classes, and their subsequent glowing reviews ... are almost identical. The plot thickens a third time!

Amory: It’s just a thicker plot getting thicker. (singing) It’s getting thicker. All thanks to Grace, by the way. Solid Sleuthing producer Grace Tatter.

Grace: Thank you. Also when I was looking into Ridley Academy as a business, I noticed that another company was listed on its Terms of Service website, called Creators Secrets.

Ben: Creators Secrets secrets secrets.

Amory: Ooh, I want to write the jingle for that.

Ben: Like Ridley Academy – and Scientology, for that matter – Creator Secrets is based in Clearwater, Florida. And it turns out…

Grace: …The director's name is Serge Ramelli.

Ben: The plot continues to thicken! So at least one of these glowing reviews is written by a business partner for the business…that he is reviewing.

Amory: That’s not how it’s done. But at the very end of the blog post, Serge does say that he "assists in the marketing" of Ridley Academy.

Ben: Which…OK. I mean…people write about their own businesses on Linkedin all the time…

Amory: Do they? As a reviewer?

Ben: I don't know. I forgot my login.

Amory: Haven’t we all?

Ben: Hopefully forever.

Amory: I’ll find mine when I retire.

Ben: But really, what we eventually became certain of was something we kind of knew all along. We had to talk to Stephen Ridley.

Amory: We simply had to. We had questions for this guy. A lot of questions. About Ridley Academy. About Scientology. About whether and how they’re connected. And about why this course costs so much money. So we looked for contact information. And what did you discover Grace?

Grace: Welp. In fact…when we tried to reach out to Stephen…the main point of contact for interview requests? Serge Ramelli!

Amory: Ben, I was waiting for you … (sings) the plot continues to thickens! So, Grace you sent an email.

Grace: I followed up. I followed up again. It was like trying to follow up with Ben. Just kidding. I followed up again, and again. Serge said Stephen might be willing to talk to us but....

[Serge: Yeah he’s doing a concert in Moscow and he has so little time.//Stephen has been really unreachable. He’s on vacation skiing, he’s coming Thursday night, Friday morning. So I think that next week is going to be easier//Yeah I spoke to Stephen. He’s a little more inclined to talk to you. He really didn’t want to, to be honest. I just texted him but he's recording a song for two days, in Louisiana. I'm not sure I'll give you an answer, to be honest. But I’ll try.]

Ben: Serge! Are you giving us the runaround?

Amory: I mean… this does not inspire confidence.

Grace: But we kept the faith. Perhaps…we would get our own answered prayer.

Ben: And we did!

Amory: Did we now?

Grace: I mean…kind of.

Ben: Serge comes through. Stephen Ridley picks up. And we start charging five thousand dollars for podcast classes!

Amory: It’s all coming up next week. PART TWO…of the music man.

(singing ... The plot thickens.)

Amory: Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Ben: Dost thou want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, please join OUR email list! You’ll find it at wbur.org/endlessthread.

Amory: The email list thickens.

Grace: This episode was written and produced by me, Grace Tatter. And it’s hosted by me, Amory Sivertson, and Ben Brock Johnson.

Amory: Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Ben: Editing help from Emily Siner.

Grace: The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Samata Joshi, Katelyn Harrop, Frannie Monahan, Matt Reed, Paul Vaitkus, and Cici Yu.'

Amory: And special thinks to Dean, Frannie, and Darryl C. Murphy for lending their voices to this episode. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between digital communities and the exact same chords.

Ben: The plot thickens!

Amory: If you’ve got an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or a wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, hit us up. Email endlessthread@wbur.org. (laughs) Oh I almost made it all the way through.

Ben: I know, I know. I know what you wanted to do, but you didn't do it. it's fine.

Amory: Maybe that will be in part two.

Ben: See you next week, for part two!