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[Test & Reviews] MasterClass, Online Training with Celebrities

For more than a year, Masterclass.com is running a very effective advertising campaign on Facebook and Instagram and I think many of you have seen this campaign in your news feed. I have been influenced by these ads and recently decided to offer myself a one-year subscription to Masterclass. In this article I explain to you what this is all about and my personal opinion.

  1. Masterclass: what is it?
  2. How does it work?
  3. How much does it cost? Rates & Subscription
  4. Who is it for?
  5. My detailed opinion
  6. All available courses

Note: this article is NOT sponsored. I paid for the access myself and attended classes before giving you an objective review.
Beware of dishonest sites that simply took my article without authorization to make a fake review when they have never used Masterclass.

Masterclass: what is it?

Masterclass.com (link) is the Netflix of online training in English (English subtitled).
At the end of the day: video training (between 2 and 4 hours) extremely well filmed, given by celebrities.

The attraction of this platform is the indirect access to personalities that are no longer presented, such as Annie Leibovitz, Natalie Portman, Dan Brown, Timbaland, Usher, Jimmy Chin, Serena Williams, Anna Wintour, Christina Aguilera….

The trainings currently concern 9 categories:

  • Culinary Arts
  • Film & TV
  • Music & Entertainment
  • Writing
  • Sports & Games
  • Design, Photography & Fashion
  • Business, Politics & Society
  • Science & Technology
  • Lifestyle

After two successful fundraisers ($35 million and $80 million to expand internationally), MasterClass has on its platform more than 80 courses offered by celebrities.

How’s it going?

  • You can see the list of courses(classes) offered on the MasterClass website or on YouTube. Each course has a trailer, which gives you a preview of the course content and what you will learn
  • If you like it, you create an account and decide to either buy a course every time or opt for an All-Access Pass (I will talk about this in more detail below)
  • Once access is validated, you can access the courses via your computer or via their app. Each course contains 20 to 40 mini-lessons, each lesson lasts between 2 minutes and 45 minutes.
  • You can download the videos offline via the app (iOS, Android). Or watch them in streaming. Some lessons (music in particular), for copyright reasons, cannot be downloaded offline.
  • If you don’t feel like watching the video, you can switch to “podcast” mode to listen to the sound only. Some courses specify that it is better to watch in video format.
  • Of course, you can watch the same lesson several times, or not follow the order of the lessons
  • You can also download a pdf workbook, which contains a summary of each lesson as well as the exercises at home. To share the results of these exercises at home, there is a “community” space accessible on the computer. Some people even get feedbacks directly from the teacher (i.e. the celebrity who gives lessons), but this is very rare.
  • At the end of the course, once all the videos have been viewed, you will receive an email congratulating you on completing the course

How much does it cost?

You can :

  • either buy one course at a time: $90 $100 – and you can access it unlimited this option is no longer valid
  • buy an All-Access-Pass (200€/year): to access ALL the courses available on the site. The site indicates that it costs 16,67€ per month. In reality, you can’t pay the subscription month by month. The minimum commitment period is 12 months, so you pay 200€ at once.

But if you aren’t satisfied with the service, you can contact Masterclass customer service within 30 days of your registration for a refund.

Unlike Neflix, access is individual, you can’t have several people (and several profiles) with a single account.

Cancel automatic renewal

Automatic renewal is chosen by default. Just go to the “settings” section and cancel the automatic renewal.
Click on “cancel”. There will be several messages asking you if you are sure.
Confirm the cancellation. You will see, this only cancels the automatic renewal in one year, not your account.
You will then see something like this at the bottom of your “settings” page


Refund within 30 days of use

If you aren’t satisfied with the service, you can contact Masterclass Customer Service within 30 days of your registration for a refund.

Who is it for?

With videos subtitled in English, of course for the moment the platform is only for English speakers.

With courses focusing particularly on creation: visual, musical, textual or culinary… these courses are mainly aimed at creators or people interested in the behind the scenes or fans of these so-called celebrities. Apart from the culinary courses (quite numerous), he is starting to have other courses a little more practical like Bobbi Brown’s for make-up, Kelly Wearstler for interior design, Ron Finley for gardening, or Poker courses by Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey – but they are still in the minority.

With only 2 hours of online courses, even with Natalie Portman or Jodie Foster, and content mainly aimed at beginners, you won’t be able to become an actor, let’s be honest. Neither will you know how to play tennis by spending 2 hours (virtually) with Serena Williams. I don’t think even 2 hours IRL with Serena Williams would have made me a tennis player…

Moreover, MasterClass does not offer certifications at the end of each “course” – because they are well aware that it isn’t with only 2 or 4 hours of courses that one can prove one’s knowledge in this or that field.

I signed up for MasterClass because I really like to see how it works behind the scenes. For example, IRL, I took sewing classes, jewelry classes – because I wanted to see how it’s done. And by trying to do it myself, I appreciate the products a lot more, I know how to recognize quality better. For example, I’m very interested in film classes – because I would like to appreciate more the work behind every dialogue, every shot, every expression.

As for the photography and writing classes, they aim to improve my writing skills – and the photos I take for the blog. These courses will have a direct impact on my artistic “creations”.

As for business courses, to tell you the truth, I don’t know most of the celebrities in this category, but they all have brilliant things to teach. I’m basically a curious person – so if I’m also “taught” by experts in their field and my subscription already includes all this material, that’s the icing on the cake.


My opinion

These courses are extremely motivating and provide a lot of behind-the-scenes information. It allows you to better appreciate movies, novels, short stories, photos, tennis matches or a poker game… you see life through a different prism and appreciate it more. Even though I already have a very good level in English, watching these courses, covering a multitude of industries, allows me to acquire really specific vocabulary in English.

Update March 2020: I am so happy to have access to MasterClass right now. After watching the series and movies I am interested in on Netflix, I need a much more motivating platform and MasterClass is the perfect tool to motivate and self-train during coronavirus prevention containment!

We can go further by doing exercises at home but I admit that I am really lazy. However, I really appreciate the small writing challenges available in the Community part of the site (e.g. writing the first line of the novel – to make it really impactful), the contests too… I don’t necessarily participate, but I like reading the entries. This “Community” part is still not very popular unfortunately, but with time, if it becomes more active, it will also be a gold mine of mutual help and motivation. No, I still don’t know how to play violin or tennis, but I will be able to better appreciate the next game on TV or recognize the wrong notes 😀

There are a few details that I really appreciate – visual or functional – namely :

  • Training with incredible visual quality. We’re on Ultra HD, with professional editing – and an aesthetic common to all trainings.
  • On Android and iOS, with the Masterclass app, you can choose to download the videos offline – in normal quality (1Giga per training on average) or in Ultra HD quality (500Mb for 3 minutes). Some courses aren’t available for offline download, but this is very rare.
  • The resolution, as on YouTube, can be chosen. You can also choose the “auto” resolution which will automatically detect the speed of your Internet connection
  • You can choose to speed up the videos or on the contrary slow them down (0.5 / 1 / 1.5 / 2) which is very appreciable because it isn’t the case on Netflix (sometimes I would like to go fast on Netflix, for some documentaries but it isn’t possible)
  • You can choose the“podcast” mode. Or you can switch to another application or another tab but the video or sound continues to run. This is a configurable feature. It works for me because sometimes I just want to listen but not necessarily watch; or I surf while I’m listening. YouTube doesn’t allow it on a cell phone for example.
  • Subtitles are available for all videos, in English
  • We can tag the courses that interest us and build a personal “list”. As with Netflix, the courses related to the ones you are taking are suggested on the computer version, allowing you to access the courses of the same topic
  • At the end of a lesson, you are automatically redirected to the next lesson in a few seconds
  • A red bar allows you to follow the progress of the course, you can see where you are at a glance. Which lesson we are at.

OK, but what’s the advantage of paid courses vs. free content all over YouTube?

It’s true, these celebrities have already shared their tips and advice a thousand times… for free, whether on YouTube, in TV shows, podcasts or in the newspapers…. in a disjointed way. We have a maximum of 4 pages about them; and a maximum of 1 hour for each interview (where they come instead to promote this or that service, this or that film). Whereas with this paid course, it’s a concentrate of advice accumulated throughout their career. To illustrate a point, they will cite several films where they had to imitate a character’s accent – instead of giving an example, and a specific film.

Not to mention the exceptional image quality: it doesn’t feel like watching a simple interview, but like watching a movie – with the music going well, the introduction going well, and videos in Ultra UD (thanks to Chromecast or Apple TV). Just to have such high quality images, trailers that make you want to… it motivates you to watch even classes that are far away from my usual interests.

The same quality of information could only be obtained by paying : Before, I really liked to buy Blue-Ray because for each film, there were comments from several teams – the director and the scriptwriter, the main actors, the special effects team, the composer…. so I could watch and enjoy the film under 5 different lights. It’s something I like very much, but some directors comment better than others. And I regret that all these comments aren’t that structured: the director comments on each scene, but it’s not grouped by theme so it goes a little bit all over the place.

Conclusion

With MasterClass, each training is like a well-structured and condensed film. The courses follow a fairly strict framework and the editing is done behind it to make the whole thing more fluid. As soon as the instructor starts to go into insignificant details or repeats himself, we move on to the next lesson. This way, the content is very concentrated. Each lesson is all about one thing. It’s very well organized so that you can find THE lesson you’re interested in – which isn’t necessarily the case with podcasts that you can access for free online.

The content is unique and cannot be found for free elsewhere. Even if the quality of the instructors varies from one to another, I find that subscription with unlimited access is worth its price as the offer is so varied. Moreover, if you aren’t satisfied with the service, you can request a refund within 30 days.


I hope this has given you the information you need. To read my detailed opinion on each of the classes, read this article
If you would like to see a list of all the classes available, please see the list below

The list & link to all available courses

I put in bold the courses I particularly recommend

In summary :

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