Reasons Why String Instrument Insurance is the Safest Bet!

Insurance for musical instruments is essential for every musician. Regardless of the kind and family of the musical instruments you play and the style of music you are into, insurance policy is a protective shield for you. Most importantly, if you are a professional musician, says a string artist, then your String Instrument Insurance gives you the freedom to perform sans any financial concerns and public liabilities.

So, whether you have got a violin, a guitar, or any other instrument lately, or you already have an uninsured musical gear, expert’s say, get those insured right away because emergencies are always uninvited.

Insurance for musical instruments - the meaning

When it comes to defining insurance for musical instruments, there can be two scenarios. Number one is insurance as an add-on with your existing homeowners’ insurance or renters’ insurance plan. And, number two is a standalone policy specially designed for musical instruments.

However, there is a catch here. The add-on or rider with your home insurance is more likely to offer limited coverage and no coverage at all if something happens to the instruments outside your home. However, dedicated insurance will make sure that your musical gears are protected in and out. And the extent of coverage is likely to be on the higher side.

So, finally, it’s you who has to decide on the most suitable option. And if you are looking for an expert opinion, most industry experts say, the second option, i.e., specialized musical instrument insurance policies are the safest bet, no matter if you are a hobbyist or a professional musician.

Can’t you do without an insurance plan for your string instrument?

Insuring your musical gears is possibly the best kind of protection for sure. If you look at the statistics of musical instrument theft cases in the United States of America, you will gawk in surprise. As many as 1 million instruments and even more go missing every year in the US. So, in light of the given data, don’t you think having insurance by your side is a good idea? A String Instrument Insurance or insurance for any other musical instrument offers comprehensive protection against theft, loss, and damage.

And, how could you forget third-party liabilities such as accidental damage or loss to people or properties due to your instrument? Professionals often face such difficulties. When stuck in such a financially draining situation, your insurance policy for musical instruments is the best resort.

The most important point to be noted here is - your homeowners’ insurance policy is very unlikely to provide you with all-round protection in cases of theft, loss, damage, and public liability.

Getting a policy made easy for you

Before you go ahead and look for a suitable policy for your musical instruments, here are a couple of crucial things you need to consider. Let’s take a look at them -

●        It’s always wise to understand your specific needs from a given insurance policy in the first place. And, you can do it by making a list of gears and accessories you want to insure. There are many insurance providers who cover everything right from instruments to cases when you take a comprehensive insurance plan from them. However, you should clarify the same beforehand. It will help you to choose a plan according to your needs.

●        Make sure to get the appraisals done before talking to your potential insurance service provider. It will help you to get the right value for your instruments.

An important tip - When looking for an insurance company, considering multiple options is recommended by experts. When you have multiple options in hand, it becomes easy for you to compare different policies and then choose according to your specific needs.

How to Take Proper Care Of Brass Musical Instrument from COVID-19?

The disease COVID-19 is a global pandemic and has taken many lives so far. In the midst such a turmoil where the world is weeping as how to deal with this life-threatening disease, the only way to survive is to maintain hygiene and cleanliness. Personal hygiene plays a pivotal role to stay from getting affected from this disease and social distancing is another significant option in coping with the situation. Just like you pay attention towards personal hygiene and care; it is equally important that if you own any brass musical instrument, you must take proper care of the instrument to prevent the spread of infection besides having the Brass Musical Insurance

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Need for sanitization

The disease COVID-19 is spreading at a fast pace and the need for sanitization has enhanced subsequently. People are having a hard time looking for sanitizer, isopropyl alcohol and disinfecting wipes in medical stores and have taken washing of hands frequently seriously. But it is imperative to take care of the musical instruments, to be precise, disinfect the instrument. As the situation is not normal, you are not performing and practicing at home but you still need to sanitize your instrument. After all, you are unaware who touched your brass instrument before social distancing started.

Instrument hygiene

As the transmission of viruses and bacteria is of great concern and consideration, it is obvious there must be a protocol pertinent to shared musical instruments. It is common in music classes that musical instruments are shared among the students where they perform and practice round the year. Thus, some basic things need to be taken into considerations which are as follows:

1. All students or musicians must have their own instrument
2. Everyone must use their own mouthpiece
3. If any musician has reed instruments, it must not be shared
4. If instruments are shared in class, then the disinfectant solution, wipes, and alcohol must be available in the class to use among different players.

When using or renting a school owned musical instrument, every user must understand the importance of daily cleaning of the instruments is highly required to maintain proper hygiene. So, before you use any shared instrument, it is advisable that you must make use of swabs, alcohol wipes or disinfectant solution to clean the instrument thoroughly. It is vital to maintain overall cleanliness as it is essential to prevent the building up of residue inside the instrument.

How to disinfect?

To disinfect the instrument, you will get isopropyl alcohol in the market, mostly in the medicine store. As there is a huge demand for this, buy it in large quantities and use it for disinfecting your instrument as well as for self sanitization.

When it comes to disinfecting the brass instrument, take the alcohol in moderate amount on a soap towel and rub it all over the instrument and you can heave a sigh of relief as there is no chance of contacting the disease from your instrument.

Another significant option you have for disinfecting your instrument is the use of UV-C lamps. It is also known as germicidal lamps and is mostly used in laboratories and is capable of killing all kinds of viruses and germs. The generally common commercially available germicidal lamps in the market are UV-C led lamps that make use of ultraviolet lights of short wavelength for inactivating the viruses. These types of devices are sold as wands that you can turn on and wave on the surface that you want to disinfect.

Conclusion

It is widely known that COVID-19 is a pandemic, so recommended that you should now keep your instrument with you, should not lend or share with others and must sanitize it as mentioned above. If your instrument gets lost or damaged, your Brass Musical Insurance will give coverage but if the disease spread by sharing the instrument with others, then it will become a matter of grave tension.

Types of Insurance for Musical Instruments Retail Business

Business insurance is so designed that it gives complete protection to the financial assets of a business owner and is a crucial investment for musical instrument stores too. You might have dreamt of opening as well as operating your musical instrument store. Your store sells highly expensive items and the risk of shoplifting cannot be ignored and you are also at risk of losing business assets that can be damaged from natural disasters or fire.  Thus, all such risks are covered when you opt for Insurance for Retailers.

Types of insurance for musical instruments store business

A wide variety of insurance for musical instrument stores are available in the market. It solely depends on the business owner as which insurance to opt for his or her business. Let’s take a look at the types of insurance available for musical instruments store business:

• General liability insurance

It is vital for musical instrument stores as it gives coverage to premises, product liability and complete operations. The accident is unpredictable and if any occurs in the store gets covered under premises liability, though loss or damage is protected under complete operations. Product liability comprises any damage caused because of products.

• Commercial auto insurance for musical instrument store

This type of insurance is for vehicles used for business purpose. If you do not make deliveries but use it for business purpose, even if you use the vehicles to pick up merchandise or supplies for storage and for doing so if your vehicle met with an accident, the damage that occurs to your car and bodily injured and so on will be covered under commercial auto insurance policy.

• Cyber liability insurance for musical instrument store

If you sell musical instruments online as well as the accessories, then it is imperative that you must get business insurance in the form of cyber liability for the store. This type of insurance gives protection if any cybercrime occurs. Cybercrimes include customers making a payment with fake credit cards, stealing of customer information and hacker breaching confidential data. In this age of digital era, this type of insurance is an utter necessity as it protects both the business owner and the customers.

• Business property insurance for musical instrument store

Unpredictable events like natural disasters, severe weather conditions and fire breakout can occur anytime leading to severe damage to the business property. It could incur you huge loss. With this type of insurance most of the things are taken care of and you can get to your business quite faster.

• Store workers compensation

Employees working at a musical instrument store are exposed to greater injury risk because of heavy, large and awkwardly shaped instruments at the store. Besides ensuring safety precautions at the workplace, the finest thing you can do for your workers is by offering them worker’s compensation insurance. If an employee is hurt while lifting heavy instruments or if there is an accident in your store, all the medical bills will be covered by the insurance.

• Store crime insurance

This is a type of insurance that protects the business if any crime occurs. The biggest crime risk involves in a musical instrument store is shoplifting; another risk involves writing fraudulent checks, vandalism, theft of money and employee dishonesty. To mitigate such risks, opt for a crime insurance policy.

Conclusion

Musical instrument stores offer quite a good source of income but you must not lose your business by not choosing the appropriate protection policy. So, choose from the above Insurance for Retailers policies that suit you the most and protect your business in unforeseen situations. 

Homeowner’s vs. Specialized Insurance Policy Plan for Woodwind Instruments

Picture this - You drove down to the city’s best gig space to get the final venue booking done for your upcoming show. Everything went well until you came out of the venue only to find out that someone broke into your car, and now your woodwind is missing. Without wasting any time, you called your homeowner’s insurance service provider and filed the claim. Your insurer then assigned an insurance claim adjuster to investigate your case.

Investigation started!

The insurance adjuster ran a series of web searches and got to know that you are much of a professional and have played your woodwind instrument (that is covered under your homeowners’ insurance policy) outside your home at several gigs.

But what he found wasn’t good news for you. Why so?

The reason - as you perform outside against monetary benefits, your musical instrument is no longer a household thing, and it would be considered a commercial gear. What does it mean? It means, your homeowners’ insurance plan (that’s intended for your household belongings) will not cover any such item that is being used commercially.

All the convincing talks!

You tried to convince the insurance claim adjuster that you are not a professional woodwind instrument player and that you’ve performed in just one or two shows in one year and have earned as little as $200. Upon hearing this, the claim adjuster shrugged and informed you that no matter you’ve earned $200 or $20, no matter you’ve played ten concerts or one in the last one year, your musical instrument will not come under your homeowners’ insurance plan.

An expensive lesson for life!

Your heart skipped a beat, and you got the lesson, a pricey one, for life.

Having said that,

Have you been through the above hypothetical situation in life?

Or, do you think that your homeowners’ insurance plan will come to rescue if your musical instrument is broken, lost, or stolen?

If so, then you are not alone. In fact, a majority of professional musicians think that their musical instruments are covered under their homeowners’ insurance plan. But actually, they’re not.

So, if you are also a musician and play your instrument for monetary benefits, check if or not you are comprehensively covered before you land in rough waters. And, the best and safest thing to do here is getting a dedicated Woodwinds Insurance.

Homeowners’ Vs. Specialized

Going further, you will come to know about the main differences between homeowners' insurance plan and specialized musical instrument insurance in light of protecting your gears. Let’s get started!

Homeowners’ Insurance Policy Woodwind Instrument Insurance Policy It is very unlikely that it will cover any damage/loss to a third-party while you’re performing or teaching. If you teach music or perform live, you are very likely to get public liability cover with this policy. It mostly covers items that you keep in your home. If you take your gear out and it’s stolen or damaged, you will not get any compensation for the same. It is a specialized insurance policy. No matter where you go if your instrument is damaged, lost or stolen, you will get complete cover depending on the scenario. Your home insurance provider might not understand the degree of damage you can go through if your instrument is lost, damaged, or stolen. A specialized Woodwind Insurance provider understands the degree of the loss and will get it fixed or replaced as soon as possible.

It does not matter whether you are a musician, a music teacher, or a music store owner; with a dedicated insurance policy for musicians you are absolutely-financially safe.  A reliable and reputable music insurance company will make sure that you and your instruments are protected against any loss, damage or theft. Plus, their services are transparent, on-time, seamless, and reliable. Most importantly, their team is always ready to help you with your queries and confusions.