Songscription is putting AI technology to use for transcribing music, with a focus on helping musicians to transcribe their songs and jams, as well as wider music education.

Having signed up more than 150,000 users, now the company has raised a $5m funding round led by investment firm Reach Capital.

Emerge Capital, 10x Founders and Dent Capital were among the other investors in the round, as well as former Guns’n’Roses guitarist Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal.

Songscription said that it will use the round to expand the instruments and notation outputs that it supports, as well as working towards its goal of becoming “a learning application that provides live performance feedback to users and helps them learn any song on any instrument”.

With any AI startup, there are questions around what it is using to train its models. Songscription says that it has used public-domain material as well as working with artists and music companies. It is keen to work with global music publishers to increase that dataset.

“For Songscription, ethics are top of mind, and we are working closely to sign deals with more industry players, including major publishers, to ensure their service honours all stakeholders, noted advisor Elizabeth Moody, partner at Granderson Des Rochers.