Why I'm Moving My Biggest S-Cubed Bundles Away from Teachers Pay Teachers

An honest look at the changing business of selling educational resources, and why I've decided to take a different path.

I've been making some very big changes behind the scenes at S-Cubed Music, and I think it's important to tell you why.

Over the next six weeks, I'll be moving my biggest-selling S-Cubed curriculum bundles away from Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) and making them available directly through my new online store, SCubedMusic.com.

This includes my S-Cubed Mega Bundle and my Level 1 curriculum bundles in both PowerPoint and Google Slides formats.

These are the products that have been the foundation of my business for years.

And this was not a decision I made lightly.

First, I Want to Say Thank You to Teachers Pay Teachers

When I started sharing S-Cubed on TPT in 2013, I was a middle school chorus teacher with an idea.

I wanted to help other teachers solve a problem I knew very well: how do you teach middle school students to become independent music readers in a way that is sequential, engaging, and actually works in a real classroom?

I created S-Cubed because I needed it myself.

Teachers Pay Teachers gave me a place to share that work with the world.

Without TpT, I genuinely don't believe S-Cubed would have reached the thousands of teachers and more than 100,000 students it has reached today.

For that, I will always be grateful.

Over the years, S-Cubed became one of the top-selling resources in its category, and I've been fortunate to become one of the top 1% of sellers on the platform.

But I'm still just one person.

I'm not a publishing company with a large staff. I don't have a marketing department, a curriculum development team, or a corporate office.

It's me.

I'm the person who created the lessons, recorded the videos, answered the questions, made the updates, and spent countless hours trying to make the program better.

And that's why the recent changes at TpT matter so much to me.

The Business Has Changed

When I first started selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, the platform kept approximately 15% of each sale.

Several years later, that increased to 20%.

I understood that. Businesses have expenses. Platforms need to make money. And TpT provided a marketplace that helped teachers discover my work.

But the latest changes, announced on October 1, 2026, have forced me to rethink how I operate.

Beginning in January 2027, remaining on the higher-royalty seller arrangement means agreeing to exclusivity requirements.

And exclusivity is something I have never agreed to.

Throughout the life of S-Cubed, I've worked with multiple companies to make the program available to teachers. I've never wanted to limit where teachers could find my curriculum.

Under the new arrangement, choosing not to be exclusive means accepting a substantially lower royalty rate.

For my business, that means TpT will retain 45% of qualifying sales beginning January 1.

Think about that for a moment.

The same curriculum. The same videos. The same years of development and refinement.

But a much larger percentage of the sale goes to the marketplace rather than the person who created the resource.

I understand that TpT has its own business decisions to make.

But so do I.

And Then There's JW Pepper

I also want to acknowledge JW Pepper, another company that has helped make S-Cubed available to music educators.

I'm grateful for that relationship.

But JW Pepper retains approximately 50% of each sale.

That's a significant percentage, especially for a small business built around intellectual property that took years to create.

I'm not criticizing either company for needing to make money.

But when you look at the economics of these arrangements, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify keeping my largest curriculum bundles on platforms that retain such a substantial share of the revenue. I'm not leaving JW Pepper because so many teachers have relationships with the company and schools are comfortable purchasing from them. But still...50% is a big cut.

And now, with new technologies, there are other options for me...

So I Built My Own Store

For the past two months, I've been working incredibly hard on something completely new.

SCubedMusic.com.

It's my own online store, built using Shopify.

And the difference is enormous.

Instead of giving up 45% or 50% of every sale, I can sell directly to teachers while paying much smaller platform and payment-processing fees.

That means two important things.

First, I can keep more of the revenue from the work I've created.

That allows me to continue improving S-Cubed, supporting teachers, and developing new resources. 90% of what I've offered online is free through social media posts, blog posts, YouTube videos, Facebook page comments and running groups, but S-Cubed is the main source of revenue for my work.

Second, and perhaps more importantly for you, I can charge less.

For years, marketplace pricing rules and the economics of selling through third parties have influenced how I price my curriculum.

With my own store, I have more freedom.

I can offer meaningful discounts, run promotions, and make the complete S-Cubed curriculum more affordable without giving away nearly half of every sale.

That's a win for my small business.

And I believe it's a win for teachers, too.

What Happens to S-Cubed on TpT?

I'm not leaving Teachers Pay Teachers.

I want to be very clear about that.

You'll still find my individual S-Cubed lessons there. You'll still find my substitute plans, "QUICK" series, musical theater units and other resources there.

But by the end of December 2026, my largest curriculum bundles will be transitioning to my own store.

These include:

The S-Cubed Mega Bundle
S-Cubed Level 1 PowerPoint bundles
S-Cubed Level 1 Google Slides bundles

Teachers have told me for years that they want the complete program.

They want the sequence. They want everything organized. They want to be able to start at Lesson 1 and know exactly where they're going.

And I want to continue making that possible.

You'll simply be able to purchase those complete bundles directly from me. I've even provided a clear section on how to purchase using purchase orders!

S-Cubed Is Growing in Other Ways, Too

While I've been building the new store, I've also been developing and launching something else I'm tremendously excited about: the S-Cubed AI Coach.

This is a new way for middle school chorus teachers to get support with the real challenges they face every day.

Changing voices. Classroom management. Sight-singing instruction. Pacing. Reluctant singers. Sectionals. All those situations that don't necessarily come with an easy answer.

The AI Coach is hosted on Studio.com, but you can explore it through my new website- SCubedMusic.com

And that's another reason I'm excited about having my own online home.

Teachers can now discover the curriculum, explore the AI Coach, and connect directly with me in one place.

I Think This Is a Turning Point

If I'm being completely candid, I think TpT may be making a significant mistake with these changes.

I understand why a marketplace would want sellers to be exclusive.

But when you've built a business over more than a decade, when your work is already distributed through multiple companies, and when you've invested thousands of hours into developing your own intellectual property, exclusivity is a very big thing to ask.

I suspect other established sellers are having similar conversations with themselves right now.

Some will choose to stay exclusive.

Others will decide, as I have, that it's time to build something of their own.

Neither decision is necessarily right for everyone.

But for me, the choice became clear.

I can be grateful for what TpT helped me build without feeling obligated to keep my entire business there forever.

Times change.

Businesses change.

And sometimes, the people who create the products have to change, too.

A Special Sale to Celebrate This New Chapter

To celebrate the launch of my new store and this transition, I'm offering something special.

The S-Cubed Mega Bundle PowerPoint version is 50% OFF this week only! If you want the Google Slides version, after you purchase it from my new store, email me "Please send the Google Slides Version" along with the receipt of purchase, and I'll see it...just as I've done for people who have to buy from JW Pepper where they aren't able to sell the GS version due to tech limitations of their platform.

Regular price on my store: $349. ($399 at JW Pepper...and no longer on TPT).

Sale price: $174.50

That's a savings of $174.50 on the complete curriculum.

No coupon code needed.

You can purchase it directly from me at:

SCubedMusic.com

And when you do, you're not just purchasing a curriculum.

You're supporting the person who created it, who continues to improve it, and who genuinely cares about helping middle school chorus teachers succeed.

Finally, Thank You

I've been doing this since 2013.

What started as a solution for my own classroom has become something far bigger than I ever imagined.

And none of it would have happened without the teachers who trusted me enough to bring S-Cubed into their classrooms.

Whether you found me through Teachers Pay Teachers, JW Pepper, a conference, a Facebook group, or a conversation with another chorus teacher, thank you.

I'm still the same teacher who created S-Cubed.

I'm still the same one-man operation.

I'm just opening a new door.

And I hope you'll walk through it with me.

— Mr. D

Creator of S-Cubed Sight Singing Program and the S-Cubed AI Coach

Visit the new S-Cubed store

50 New Choir Students in January?! Here's How I'd Handle It!

What happens when you've spent an entire semester building your students' sight-singing skills, and suddenly a whole new group of students walks into your classroom in January?

That's exactly the situation an S-Cubed teacher shared on Facebook this morning.

Here is the post- Click here to see it.

She's been using S-Cubed since the beginning of the school year, and her students have been progressing through the lessons. But in January, she's expecting approximately 50 NEW students!

FIFTY!

And she wanted to know how to handle it.

How do you bring that many new students into a program that's already well underway? How do you help them catch up without holding back the students who've been learning since August?

These are the kinds of real-world challenges middle school chorus teachers face all the time.

And they're not always easy to solve.

My First Response: Let Your Students Help You Teach!

When I saw her question, I immediately responded on Facebook.

One of my favorite strategies in situations like this is peer tutoring.

Think about it. You've spent months teaching your current students how to read music using S-Cubed. They've developed skills, confidence, and an understanding of the routines.

Why not put those skills to work?

Pair experienced students with newcomers. Let your more advanced students demonstrate, guide, and encourage the new students.

There are some wonderful benefits to this approach.

Your experienced students get to reinforce what they've learned by teaching it. Your new students receive individual attention. And you create opportunities for leadership and collaboration.

But with 50 new students arriving, I knew there had to be more ways to approach this challenge.

That's when I had an idea.

I Put Her Question Into My S-Cubed AI Coach

I copied the teacher's question directly from Facebook and pasted it into my S-Cubed AI Coach.

I didn't rewrite it. I didn't create a hypothetical scenario. I simply gave the Coach the same real-world problem that this teacher had shared with me.

And then I recorded the response.

WOW!

The Coach did exactly what I hoped it would do.

It suggested peer tutoring, just as I had.

But it didn't stop there.

It explored additional strategies for organizing students, supporting beginners, differentiating instruction, and helping new students become part of an established classroom without bringing everyone's progress to a halt.

It offered multiple approaches rather than pretending there was one perfect solution.

And that's important.

Because every middle school chorus classroom is different!

What works for one teacher might need to be adjusted for another. Class sizes, schedules, student experience, and available resources all matter.

The Coach helped explore those possibilities.

Watch What Happened!

I recorded the S-Cubed AI Coach responding to this teacher's actual question so you can see the process for yourself.

Click here to watch it "live".

I encourage you to watch the response and think about how you might adapt some of these ideas for your own classroom.

This Is Why I Created the S-Cubed AI Coach!

When I first developed S-Cubed back in 2013, my goal was to help middle school chorus teachers teach sight singing in a way that was sequential, engaging, and successful.

Over the years, I've heard from teachers across the country about the challenges they face.

And here's something I've learned:

Teaching sight singing is only ONE part of running a successful middle school chorus program!

What about the student who refuses to sing?

The boys whose voices are changing?

The students who mouth the words instead of actually singing?

The class that won't stop talking?

The administrator who walks into your classroom during a difficult rehearsal?

Or the 50 new students who suddenly appear in January?

These are REAL problems.

And teachers need practical solutions.

That's why I wanted the S-Cubed AI Coach to do more than simply explain how to teach my curriculum.

I wanted it to be a resource that middle school chorus teachers could turn to when they needed ideas, strategies, encouragement, or a different way of approaching a problem.

Not to replace their professional judgment.

Not to suggest there's one magical answer to every classroom challenge.

But to help them think through their options and find approaches that work for their students.

Imagine Having That Kind of Support When You Need It

One of the hardest things about teaching middle school chorus is that you're often making dozens of decisions every single day.

And sometimes you just need someone to help you think through a situation.

That's what excites me about the S-Cubed AI Coach.

You can describe a challenge in your own words, just as this teacher did, and explore practical possibilities.

You don't have to be using S-Cubed to benefit from many of these conversations.

The Coach is designed to support middle school chorus teachers—not just sight-singing instruction.

And today's example reminded me exactly why I wanted to create it.

Got a Middle School Chorus Problem? Let's Talk About It!

I'd love to hear from you.

What's happening in YOUR classroom right now?

Are you struggling with classroom management? Changing voices? Reluctant singers? Scheduling? Students with vastly different skill levels?