You can now share a lesson with a gift link

Starting today, if you're a Fret Science member, you can share a lesson you have with someone who doesn't. Make a gift link on the lesson's page, send it to a friend, a student, or your bandmates, and up to ten people can open the lesson for 14 days. They don't need an account, and nothing asks them for an email address.

Each member gets three gift links a month.

How to share a lesson

On a lesson you can share, there's a gift icon beside the title. Tap it to open the "Gift this lesson" panel.

The panel starts with your first name in the "Your name on the gift" box, and the page your friend lands on says "Sam shared a lesson with you," with your name in place of Sam's. You can change the name to whatever you'd like it to say, or clear it to stay anonymous, and then it reads "A Fret Science member shared a lesson with you." Press "Make a gift link," then copy the link, or on a phone, share it straight from the panel.

The panel also lists the links you've made, with how many places are left on each and when each one ends. "Turn off" ends a link at once, and anyone who opened it loses the lesson the next time the page loads. A link you turn off still counts toward the month's three, and the count starts over on the first of the month.

What your friend sees

The link opens a page with the lesson's title, your name, and an "Open the lesson" button. Pressing it opens the lesson in that browser until the link ends, so they can come back to it as often as they like in those 14 days. The video and the written lesson are included. The downloads aren't.

A banner at the top of the lesson says who it's from and when it ends, and how to keep it: the course it belongs to, or for a library lesson, a membership.

Each browser that presses the button takes one of the ten places, so someone who opens it on a phone and later on a laptop uses two. Pasting the link into a text message or a post doesn't use a place, even when the app shows a preview of the page. Only pressing the button counts.

Which lessons you can share

You can share any lesson you have that isn't already free:

• Course lessons, if you own the course or your tier includes it
• Library lessons that come with your tier
• The written lesson behind one of my free videos, such as the scale exercise from Billy Strings' teacher

Free lessons don't need a gift link: send the lesson's address instead. Lessons that come with your tier can be shared once your first Patreon payment has gone through, so gift links don't open up during a free trial.

A free lesson every month

I'm using the same links to give away one lesson a month to everyone who follows Fret Science for free on Patreon. November's is Morning Light, the first lesson in Play the Changes, and it went out on Thursday. If you'd like the next one, follow Fret Science on Patreon. The free tier costs nothing.

If a gift link doesn't behave the way this post describes, use the Feedback button on the page, and I'll look into it.