Songscription, a startup that uses AI to turn recorded music into musical notation, has raised $5 million in a round led by previous investor Reach Capital. Additional backers in the round include Emerge Capital, 10x Founders, Dent Capital, and guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal, an advisor to the company whose résumé includes an eight-year stint with Guns N’ Roses.
The San Francisco-based company’s technology can turn a recording into sheet music, tablature or interactive piano roll. The cloud-based platform accepts multiple audio formats such as MP3, WAV, MP4, MIDI files and YouTube links. After using AI to analyze the audio, Songscription can output printable sheet music or MIDI, MusicXML or Guitar Pro file formats. Users can also download and edit their transcriptions directly within the Songscription platform. The company claims to have drawn over 150,000 users from over 150 countries.
The funding will be used to expand Songscription’s available instruments and notation outputs, among other needs. The platform currently supports piano, violin, flute, guitar, bass guitar and trumpet. Ultimately, the company says it wants to become a necessary composition tool that captures performances and renders the music as notation and MIDI to enable easy recreation.
Thal predicts that Songscription “will change musicians’ lives” by providing time-saving assistance to both music teachers and players. “Even us professionals can use it to save hours of time trying to recall what we played on albums we recorded years ago,” he said in a statement. “It’s a real game changer.”
While some AI companies are engaged in legal battles with music rights holders, Songscription intends to be a friend, not foe, of the music industry. “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 honors all stakeholders,” advisor Elizabeth Moody, a partner at Granderson Des Rochers, said in a statement.
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To train its model, Songscription has used material from the public domain and partnerships with artists and businesses. CEO Andrew Carlins told Billboard that Songscription’s need for licensing deals “is still a gray area…but because empowering artists is core to our mission, we have decided to proactively approach the publishers to sign deals that will include rights for both the input and output regardless of where the legal line is drawn,” he said.
